Death by Smoothie, page 9
I knew better than to argue with her.
“I promise,” I said, fingers firmly crossed under the table.
“And you must absolutely not stop off at the supermarket on the way home for Chunky Monkey.”
“Absolutely not. No way. Never!” I assured her, scraping the last of the sour cream from my plate.
* * *
The thing is, I had no intention of stopping off for Chunky Monkey that night. Not until Kandi planted the idea in my head.
Yes, I promised I wouldn’t get any, but you should know by now that when it comes to Chunky Monkey, I simply can’t be trusted.
So fifteen minutes after I’d hugged Kandi goodbye, I was pulling into the parking lot of my local supermarket for my Chunky Monkey fix. I figured I could burn off some calories trotting from the parking lot to the ice cream aisle.
Which I did, feeling quite noble.
I was just reaching into the freezer case for my chocolate and banana treat when a message came over the PA.
“Attention, shopper Jaine Austen. Your friend Kandi called to remind you to stay away from the Chunky Monkey. I repeat. Shopper Jaine Austen, stay away from the Chunky Monkey.”
I stood there, dumbfounded. I couldn’t believe Kandi would sink so low as to rat me out to my supermarket.
But I took her message to heart, and you’ll be happy to know that I did not buy any Chunky Monkey that night.
I bought Chocolate Fudge Brownie instead.
Ever vigilant about sticking to my supermarket exercise regimen, I trotted over to the checkout counter and handed my bounty to a rail-thin checker with purple hair and chipped orange nail polish.
She looked at me, then at the ice cream, then back at me again, eyes narrowed like a TSA agent looking for full-size shampoo in a carry-on.
“You’re Jaine Austen, aren’t you?”
I didn’t dignify that with a reply. It was none of her darn beeswax.
“Your friend Kandi told us to be on the lookout for a lady with brown curly hair and a guacamole stain on her blazer.”
Damn. I looked down, and, sure enough, there was a guacamole stain on the lapel of my blazer.
“You sure you want this?” My purple-haired inquisitor asked, holding up my ice cream.
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“Wouldn’t you rather have some rice cakes? They’re on sale, half price on aisle twelve.”
I had no doubt they were on sale. They had to unload them somehow.
“Sounds mighty tempting, but I’ll pass.”
“Okay,” she shrugged, “but these calories aren’t going to work themselves off your hips.”
Of all the nerve!
“And that chipped polish isn’t going to remove itself from your nails,” I countered. “I think I saw nail polish remover on aisle twenty.”
That shut her up pretty darn quick.
I’m proud to say I strode out of the supermarket with my head held high, my dignity intact, and a pint of Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream in my shopping tote.
(Okay, two pints.)
Chapter Fourteen
They say that a monkey sitting at a typewriter, given an infinite amount of time, would eventually be able to bang out one of Shakespeare’s plays. I bet that that same monkey, working with one hand tied behind his back and spending half his days checking his Twitter feed, would be a Tony winner compared to David.
It was déjà vu all over again as I returned to David’s original nightmare of a script.
I pretty much made the same cuts I’d already made, punching up what passed for jokes wherever possible. Then I emailed the results to Becca, who called to tell me she was happy with my changes and planned to lock in the script to give the actors a chance to learn their lines.
“So we won’t need you at rehearsals,” she said.
What blessed news! If I had to take one more pass at that script, I’d go bonkers.
Just as I was about to jump for joy, it occurred to me that if I wasn’t at rehearsals, I wouldn’t be able to question my suspects.
“Say, Becca,” I said, “I’ve had so much fun working with everyone, it would be great if I had a way to keep in touch.”
“No problem. I’ll send you a contact list. I’m sure they’d all love to hear from you.”
Sure enough, within minutes, she’d emailed me the list. Time to start snooping.
* * *
Springing to action, I made plans to meet Delia for drinks that night at a restaurant near her condo in Westwood. I’d texted her, telling her I had something important I wanted to discuss.
She and David had eaten lunch together the day of the murder, and I needed to find out if David had left her at any time to go backstage. If only I’d been paying more attention that day and not caught up with those darn rewrites, I might have actually seen for myself who’d headed backstage.
The Westwood restaurant turned out to be a nosebleed-expensive joint with exposed brick walls and smooth jazz playing in the background. A few diners sat at linen-clad tables, chatting quietly, the kind of blissfully wealthy people who didn’t mind paying full price during happy hour.
Delia was sitting at the bar when I showed up, sipping a martini, looking regal as ever in a black flowy outfit, her raven hair streaked with silver and styled to perfection.
As I slid onto the stool next to her, I noticed she’d ordered a crab cake appetizer.
“Looks yummy,” I said, eyeing it hungrily.
“It’s fabulous,” Delia said. “You should get one, too.”
It sure did look delicious—crisp and crunchy on the outside, cooked to golden perfection—and I was more than a tad peckish. I’d been busy that afternoon, coming up with a new slogan for one of my regular clients, Fiedler on the Roof Roofers. (My leading contenders: We’ve got you covered! We’ve got it nailed! And We’re on top of it!)
Aside from a few eensy Oreos, I hadn’t eaten a thing since lunch.
I was all set to order a crab cake for myself when I saw the price on the menu: $18. No way was I forking over $18 for a single crab cake.
“On second thought,” I said, “I’m not that hungry.”
Our wannabe actor/waiter approached just then.
“What can I get you?” he asked me, beaming a high-wattage smile just in case one of us was in a position to cast him in a movie.
“House chardonnay.”
“Something to eat?”
Not without a bank loan, I refrained from saying.
“No, I’m fine.”
“So what did you want to talk about?” Delia asked when he’d gone, spearing a hunk of crab cake. You’d think at the very least she’d offer me a bite. But nada. She just put it in her mouth and started chewing.
“Jaine?” she asked when she’d swallowed. “You asked to meet with me because . . . ?”
Drat. I’d been so focused on that crab cake I almost forgot why I came. Right. The murder.
“As you may have heard, the police seem to be focusing on Aidan as their prime suspect in Misty’s murder.”
“How absurd! Aidan’s far too sweet to be a killer.”
“When we were waiting for Detective Jamison to show up after the murder, you said you thought the killer might be David. And I agree. He was furious with Misty.”
“I know.” Delia chuckled at the memory. “I loved every minute of it.”
“You and David had lunch together that day. Did he happen to go backstage at any time?”
“As a matter of fact, he did. Said he was going to the restroom. But, for all I know, he was in the kitchen poisoning Misty’s smoothie.”
My sentiments exactly.
Our waiter showed up just then with my chardonnay and a big bowl of nuts.
“Here you go,” he said. “One house chardonnay and some freshly roasted nuts.”
My rescuing angel! I was ready to nominate the guy for Wannabe Actor of the Year.
The nuts were glistening with oil and sprinkled with salt, just the way I liked them. I was just about to reach for a cashew when Delia shoved the bowl aside, shrieking: “No nuts! Take them away! This instant!!”
The waiter, cowed, quickly snatched the bowl and hurried off, while well-heeled diners looked up from their meals to give us the once-over. And I couldn’t blame them. That had been one heck of an explosion.
“Sorry about that,” Delia said with an apologetic shrug. “I can’t bear to even look at nuts. Not since my sister died. She was highly allergic to peanuts and went into anaphylactic shock after eating some sea bass prepared with peanut oil at a restaurant. She’d asked if there were any peanut products in the dish and was assured by the restaurant that there weren’t.
“They were wrong, and now she’s dead. Every time I even think about nuts, I get angry all over again and want to strangle the idiot server who brought my sister that cursed sea bass.”
“How awful,” I commiserated. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“Thanks. I’ve learned to live with it.”
After the outburst I’d just witnessed, it seemed she had a lot more learning to do.
“So,” I said, eager to get her mind off her sister, “how’s everything going with the play?”
“Great, ever since Katie came on board. The play still stinks, of course, but now we’re having fun with it. With Misty in the lead, I was afraid the press would be so bad, I’d never work again. Now I think we’ve got a shot.”
She began yakking about I Married a Zombie, how it could be a camp classic, maybe even make it to Broadway.
I was barely listening, however, unable to stop thinking about her outburst over the nuts. (And the fact that she still hadn’t offered me a bite of her crab cake. A single chunk remained on the plate, a chunk she seemed to have forgotten. It was all I could do not to reach over and pop it in my mouth.)
But I digress. Back to Delia and her explosive temper.
I thought about how much Delia hated Misty, how she’d called her Craptessa, and how they’d clashed during rehearsals. Delia just said she’d been afraid the play might put an end to her acting days. Had she seen her reputation irreparably tarnished in what was sure to be—thanks to Misty’s godawful performance—a fiasco of a play? Had she bumped off Misty in a moment of madness, desperate to save her career?
Now I wondered what Delia herself had been doing while David excused himself to use the bathroom. Maybe it was Delia, and not David, who’d dashed into the kitchen to tinker with Misty’s smoothie.
I’m no criminologist, but in my humble op, I’d say anyone who doesn’t offer to share her crab cake is certainly capable of murder.
Chapter Fifteen
Delia may have just leaped onto my suspect list, but my front runner was still David. It was time to pay him a visit, but I needed a pretext for showing up at his doorstep. No way could I let him find out I suspected him of murder.
So I put in a call to him, armed with an excuse I’d just thought up.
“Hi, David,” I said when he answered. “It’s Jaine Austen. I was hoping I could stop by your apartment tonight. I have a gift for you.”
“A gift?”
“A small token of my appreciation for giving me the chance to work on the play.”
“That’s very nice of you, Jaine, but I’m not really in the mood for visitors. Can you drop it off at the theater?”
“I won’t stay long, I promise.”
A promise that, of course, I intended to break.
He hesitated a beat before finally saying, “Okay, I guess. Eight o’clock?”
“Great!”
Now all I had to do was get him a gift.
Then inspiration struck. I grabbed my cell phone and headed up the street to the house where my former neighbor, the original Cryptessa, once lived. It was a hellhole when she lived there, but the new owners had fixed it up, so I was able to get a good picture. Which I then printed out.
A quick trip to the drugstore for a frame and gift bag, and voila! I had the perfect present for an I Married a Zombie geek.
After a healthy dinner from Sprout’s (okay, KFC), I tooled over to David’s apartment in Hollywood, an uninspired box of a building pockmarked with protruding room air conditioners.
In spite of a sign out front threatening high-tech security, I was able to breeze through the front door to a closet-sized lobby, where I took the elevator to David’s apartment.
David came to the door in shorts and a faded tee, gaunt and hollow-eyed, his hair in Albert Einstein mode. A pair of extraordinarily knobby knees poked out from under his shorts.
“Hey, Jaine,” he said, forcing a smile. “Thanks for the gift.”
He reached out to take the tote from my hand.
Yikes, was he going to just take it without inviting me in?
I couldn’t let that happen.
“Oh, wow!” I said, slithering past him into his living room. “What a neat apartment.”
A total lie. The place was a decorating dump, a nerd cave cluttered with nubby brown plaid furniture, a battered wooden coffee table, and a TV hooked up to a veritable tower of ancient VCR and DVD players. Whatever money he’d won from the lottery sure hadn’t gone into redecorating.
But I zeroed in on the one feature of the room that stood out.
“I love your photos!”
And indeed, much of David’s living room wall was plastered with I Married a Zombie posters, as well as autographed photos of the original cast, including a young, redheaded Corky MacLaine as the original Brad Abercrombie.
What a stroke of luck! My “Cryptessa House” pic would be the perfect addition to David’s shrine to I Married a Zombie.
“For you,” I said, finally relinquishing the tote to David.
“Thanks,” he replied, tossing it on a small dinette table littered with takeout menus.
“Aren’t you going to see what’s inside?”
“Okay, sure.”
With zero enthusiasm, he reached into the bag and pulled out the picture.
“It’s a photo of the original Cryptessa’s house. She lived up the street from me.”
“Very nice,” he said, barely looking at it.
“It should fit right in with your collection.”
“Actually,” he said, gesturing to his zombie memorabilia, “I’m thinking of taking it all down.”
“Really?”
“I’m not into the show as much as I used to be,” he said, sinking down onto his sofa. Then he added with a sigh, “Be careful what you wish for, Jaine. When I won the lottery, it was a dream come true. I had the money to bring my favorite sitcom back to life. I got my dream, but it blew up in my face.”
“I hear you,” I said, parking my fanny on a brown plaid armchair, grateful I hadn’t been evicted from the premises.
“I own every episode of the original show, all nine of them. Whenever I was unhappy or depressed, they always managed to cheer me up. Not anymore.”
He stared numbly at the TV across the room, tuned to a decorating show with the sound muted.
“Now I watch Love It or List It. Nine times out of ten the people love it. So there’s not really any suspense. But at least nobody’s a zombie.”
His morose musings were interrupted just then by a piercing shriek. Good heavens. Was one of his neighbors being attacked? I was reaching for my cell to call 911 when I realized it wasn’t a human shriek, but the shrill whistle of a teakettle.
“That’s my tea,” David said, making no effort to get up. “I forgot all about it.”
“Let me get it for you.” I jumped up and headed to a tiny alcove off the living room that served as David’s kitchen.
The trash can, I couldn’t help noticing, was piled high with empty ramen cups. How sad. Had the guy never heard of Domino’s?
“Where are your mugs?” I called out as I turned off the flame under the wailing teakettle.
“In the cabinet to your left.”
I opened the cabinet door and saw a bunch of mugs with a picture of the original Cryptessa on them.
“Gee,” I said, “I never knew you could buy Cryptessa mugs.”
“You can’t. I had them specially made up.”
Talk about extreme fandom.
“But I don’t want a Cryptessa mug now. Bring me one of the others.”
It was a choice between Star Trek and Math Geek.
I went with Math Geek.
“Tea’s in the cupboard to your right,” David called out. “Make yourself a cup if you want one.”
“No, I’m good.”
I fixed David his tea and brought it out to him.
“Sugar or lemon?” I asked.
“Nah. This is fine.” He took the hot mug and put it down on his coffee table without a coaster. My mom would have had a fit. But it didn’t really matter. The table was already scarred with a cluster of mug rings.
“What did I tell you?” he said, staring at the silent TV, where a happy couple were grinning in their newly redecorated home. “They love it. They always do.”
Okay, time for a much-needed change of subject.
“I’m so sorry about how things went down with Misty,” I said. “She wasn’t exactly beloved by the other actors, but her death is a tragedy nonetheless.”
“I know,” he said, gulping back what I suspected were tears.
“Do you have any idea who may have killed her?” I asked.
“I’m pretty sure the cops think it was me.”
“You?” I tried to act surprised.
“I guess somebody must’ve told them how angry I was with Misty the day of the murder.”
“Really?” I said, hoping he wouldn’t guess that person was moi.
“I was furious when I saw her flirting with Aidan. But I didn’t kill her. I didn’t even have the nerve to confront her. Just wound up sniping at her.”
He looked down at his tea, but made no move to drink it.
“I’m so disgusted with myself for falling for Misty in the first place, for being stupid enough to believe she actually cared for me. And I was so damn full of myself during rehearsals. I really was an obnoxious jerk, wasn’t I?”
“Of course not,” I lied.
“What bothers me most was how badly I treated Becca. Becca, who’s sweet and kind and actually loves me. She’s worth twenty of Misty. Thank God, she hasn’t dumped me. I wouldn’t blame her if she did.”
