Have Your Cake and Kill Him Too (6 page)

Pacing in the doorway to the bar was my friend Delilah Fairweather. As usual, she had a cell phone jammed to her ear, and she was lambasting a hapless underling on the other end of the line. Her crimped hair danced in the topknot at the crown of her head.

But Delilah spotted me and snapped the phone shut in midtirade. “Girlfriend, you are a sight for sore eyes! How great you came tonight! You doing a little slumming? I don't suppose you've seen Zell Orcutt anywhere? The guest of honor at his own party, and he hasn't shown up yet!”

“Delilah—”

Revved with more than her usual energy, she cut me off. “Here I am trying to keep two hundred red-blooded men away from the Cupcake Girls until he—damn, you look odd. I know this isn't exactly your scene, but—what's the matter?”

Emma said, “She's had a shock. I tried to take her home already, but she's stubborn.”

“What's happened? Oh, my God!” Delilah slapped one hand to her cheek, and her eyes popped wide. “I was supposed to meet you at Fitch's Fancy! I totally forgot! Oh, Nora, I'm so sorry—”

“There's no need to apologize,” I said.

“This has been such a crazy day. It's not like me to forget a single detail, and I sure wish I hadn't started with you.”

“Really, it's no big—”

“I mean, Zell has been a pain in my tush about this party for weeks. And now he's so late I had to start the band without him, but—”

“Don't wait for Zell.” I tried to stanch her gush of words. “He's not coming.”

“Not coming? That sleaze bucket better show up in the next ten minutes or I'm never running another one of his—” She caught sight of my face and realized I wasn't kidding. “What's going on?”

“He's dead,” I said.

Delilah's dark eyes widened again, and for once she couldn't speak.

“Shot with an arrow on the grounds of Fitch's Fancy a few hours ago.”

A cyclone of a woman, Delilah had more energy than an entire cheerleading squad and twice as much enthusiasm. She'd given up a corporate job to follow her bliss into the event-planning biz and had worked herself to the top of the game in Philadelphia. Any party worth promoting had Delilah running the show, and I wasn't surprised that Zell had hired the best to launch his restaurant, although I was puzzled why Delilah would take a job like Cupcakes. Usually, she was more discerning.

“Oh, honey!” Instantly sympathetic, Delilah took my elbow and gently guided me into an alcove out of the mayhem of the party. “No wonder you look so shaky! How did it happen? Was it an accident?”

“The cops don't think so,” Emma muttered.

“It was murder? My God. Who killed the old bastard? Anybody interesting?”

Unsteadily, I shook my head. “They don't know yet.”

Delilah hugged me. “Nora, I'm so sorry I forgot about you. If I hadn't been so frazzled, maybe I could have gotten you out of there before it happened.”

“Make her sit down,” Emma ordered. “I'll get her something to drink.” She turned to me. “You've got to take care of yourself now, Sis.”

Delilah's brows rose at Emma's tone. “Is there something I should know?”

“No,” I said.

Emma snorted. “I'm going to the bar. What can I get you?”

“I've had enough already, thanks,” Delilah said.

I noted two martini glasses on the table, one still showing a few sips. I said, “Club soda for me.”

“Club soda,” Emma said, “coming right up. Keep an eye on her, Delilah.”

“Sure.” Delilah waited until Emma had left before saying, “Nora?”

Perhaps I was waiting to get safely through the first trimester. Or maybe I wasn't ready to admit that I was inconveniently pregnant. I wasn't prepared to discuss my current condition with anyone yet. Not even with my best friends.

So I said, “Don't let me keep you from your job. You probably have a zillion calls to make.”

Delilah eased me onto a stool at the tall table where she'd been drinking. “If the guest of honor's dead, I might as well take it easy. Man, I can't believe it. I was just with him a couple of hours ago.”

The room was warm, and I slid my coat off my shoulders. “What did you go to see him about?”

“Oh, you know, party stuff.” She helped arrange my coat on another stool, then finally met my eye. “To be honest, we had a big fight. I don't usually scream at clients, but Zell is—was—well, I'd better keep the specifics to myself.”

“Not for long. The police are going to come looking for you, Delilah. They'll be talking to everyone who spoke with Zell today.”

She was nodding fast and reached for her drink. “Sure, sure. I understand. I didn't see anything, though. I mean, except Zell acting like an asshole, same as always. We were supposed to finalize details about tonight, but instead we had a squabble and I left.”

She picked up her martini glass and drained the last inch of liquor in one swallow. I finally noticed that she wore only one earring, and her makeup was not as pristine as usual. Two of her beautifully manicured nails were ragged, too.

“What did you fight about?” I asked.

“Money, of course. We had a deal, but today he decided he wanted a discount.” She laughed shortly, unamused. “I probably won't get paid at all now. Not good timing for me. Maybe his partner will pony up, but I doubt it.”

“Zell had a partner? You mean, in Cupcakes?”

Delilah looked at her empty glass as if she wished she hadn't finished the martini. “ChaCha Reynolds. You ever meet her? She's running around here acting like one of the Cupcakes herself. To tell the truth, I don't know which of those two I hate working for most. Maybe ChaCha. She's always calling me sassy.” Delilah pulled a bitter smile. “Ever notice you white women never get called sassy? Just the sistahs.”

“So she isn't exactly overburdened with social graces.”

“Hey, there's a name for women who put little girls in tight clothes and make them shake their booties for a bunch of drunk frat boys, and it ain't Mother Teresa.” Delilah glanced around for a waitress. “She isn't going to be exactly grief stricken now that her partner's dead, either.”

“Oh? Why's that?”

Delilah cast me a sideways look. “You playing detective already?”

“I can't help being curious.”

“They had a big fight here yesterday. You can ask her yourself. Here comes ChaCha now.”

Charging out of the kitchen came a tiny lady with the perfectly toned body of a preteen gymnast and the pinched face of a sixty-something woman who'd spent her life hustling for a buck. The gold jewelry around her wrinkled neck, wrists and fingers said she'd been successful.

Under her breath, Delilah said, “Story goes, ChaCha used to be a chorus girl in one of those Branson country-western shows.”

ChaCha hurried over to us with a clipboard in hand. Her hair was a brassy red wig styled into a bouffant that added three inches to her diminutive size. Her Cupcakes T-shirt hinted at childlike breasts, and below the shirt she wore nothing but a pair of black dancer's tights and low-heeled tap shoes with a strap across the ankle. Her legs looked lean and strong. The bare skin of her arms, throat and face was a little loose, but tanned to a deep shade of mahogany, except for the white rings around her eyes, no doubt caused by the eye protection of a tanning booth.

“Look at the color on that woman,” muttered Delilah. “She's darker than me.”

“Delilah!” barked ChaCha, her voice raspy from years of nicotine.

“No need to shout,” Delilah said. “ChaCha, this is Nora Blackbird from the
Intelligencer.
”

“Oh yeah? A reporter?” Her accent definitely originated somewhere west of the Mississippi, but her sharp gaze bored into me with the intensity of a Wall Street trader.

“She writes the society column.”

ChaCha gave a snort that made her sound like an asthmatic horse. “You look like you belong at a cotillion, all right. You're here to work?”

“Well, I—”

“'Cause we can use the ink. First you should jaw with a couple of the Cupcake Girls, then the chef. He's straight from Austin and makes his own barbecue sauce. It'll make your story about Cupcakes more, you know, classy.”

If the queen of England walked in, she couldn't bring any class to the sordid ambiance of Cupcakes. I said, “Miss Reynolds—”

Under the table, Delilah gave my knee a silencing bump. “Nora probably wants to circulate a little first, ChaCha. Maybe she should talk with some of your VIP guests.”

“Don't waste too much time with that shit. The chef didn't fall off no chuck wagon. He's going to be one of our biggest draws. Meanwhile, Delilah, where the hell is my partner? Zell was supposed to be here hours ago.”

“I—”

“If he's got one of the Cupcakes in a hotel room somewhere, I'm gonna cut off his balls with a bowie knife and throw 'em in the nearest deep fryer.”

“Uhm—”

There was no stopping ChaCha's rant. “If Zell spent as much attention on business as he does on those rodeo queen wannabes, we wouldn't have had so much trouble getting this dump opened.” She shoved her pen into her red wig and pointed at me. “Talk to the chef. I gotta put more toilet paper in the john.”

With that, she marched off in the direction of the restrooms, a tiny figure so bowlegged she couldn't have stopped a pig in an alley.

“Boy,” said Delilah. “Somebody should warn Donald Trump about ChaCha. She's a tycoon in the making.”

“You didn't want her to know Zell's dead?”

“I was worried she might kill the messenger, and you don't look so hot to begin with. Besides, his granddaughter's here, and this isn't the place to learn your grampa's gone.”

“You mean Clover? Verbena's daughter?” Astonished, I glanced around the crowded restaurant. “You're kidding, right?”

“No joke, honey. Not only is his grandchild here. She's working.”

“Working! How? Not—”

“Yep, she's a Cupcake Girl. Zell hired her himself.”

“No!” Shocked, I said, “His own granddaughter? Good heavens, how old is Clover now?”

“Still jailbait. Maybe sixteen?”

I shook my head. “Even Zell couldn't be such an idiot.”

“Sixteen is plenty old enough these days.” Delilah glanced around us and pointed. “And this one's older than most. There she is. On top of the bar.”

I spun my stool to get a better look at the show being performed on the long bar in the middle of the restaurant. Six young women wearing not much more than big smiles were prancing in clumsy unison. Arms around each other, they bent at the waist and waggled their bottoms, then formed a kick line and bounced together in a cowboy-booted imitation of Broad-way choreography. Gathered beneath them along the bar, men cheered and whistled.

Though I hadn't seen her in years, I spotted Clover easily. In the center of the line, she was the blond girl with long legs and the prodigious bounce beneath her Cupcakes T-shirt. Her gaze was alight with the fire of a girl just discovering the power of her sexuality.

A photographer crouched beneath her at the bar, snapping pictures. The flash popped like a strobe light, drawing attention to her alone amid the other girls. Likewise, Clover projected every atom of her being directly into the lens of the camera. As if the rest of the room did not exist, she beamed herself into the world of the photographer, and somehow that made her more magnetic, more clearly the center of the Cupcakes storm.

“Who's the photographer?” I asked Delilah over the music. I pointed at the drab young woman taking pictures. She also looked very young.

“Not one of the usual suspects,” Delilah replied. “You know her?”

I shook my head. The young woman wasn't a journalist I recognized or one of the well-known professional photographers around town.

Still, her actions seemed to focus the whole room on Clover, who was the worst dancer but by far the most charismatic of all the girls. She was taller, livelier, more sexual than the others. Even Clover's makeup—a lacquered-on sheen of colors dusted with sparkling powder—seemed to glow with more radiance than that of the others.

As we watched, Clover lifted her fist to her mouth and began to lip-synch to the pop song blasting from the speakers. Her dancing companions shot her glares, but Clover didn't care. She was the center of attention.

I tipped my head to get a better look. “Are those real?”

Delilah understood my meaning. “I hear it's the latest thing. Getting a boob job for your sweet sixteen. But when my little girl gets to this age, she's gonna get a computer and a chastity belt. You missed the first act of the floor show. Clover and ChaCha just had a screaming fight in the office.”

“They did? About what?”

“I didn't understand, really. There was a lot of cussing going on, though.” Delilah put her hand over mine. “Listen, honey, you should go home.”

I rubbed my forehead, trying to dispel the headache that threatened. “I wanted to talk about Saturday night's party at the museum.”

“Oh, Lord, did I forget something? I don't know what's wrong with me! Zell had me spooked, I guess.”

“It's okay. I wanted to touch base with you, that's all, for my piece that will run on Saturday. The invitations went out today.”

Delilah switched gears smoothly like the professional she was. “The BlackBerry cell phone thing? Honey, that invitation is so hip I can't stand it.”