Imitation of Death

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Authors: Cheryl Crane

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Books by Cheryl Crane
THE BAD ALWAYS DIE TWICE
 
IMITATION OF DEATH
 
 
 
Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation
Imitation of Death
CHERYL CRANE
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
TO JLR . . . We’ve been so many places in our life and time . . .
Chapter 1
N
ikki walked into her mother’s kitchen, flip-flops slapping on the Italian tile floor, and opened the huge commercial stainless steel refrigerator.
“If the bomb detonates, we don’t have a chance,” came a deep, sexy male voice from the terrace.
The sun was just beginning to set over the stone and wrought-iron privacy fence that framed the property and the sweet smell of bougainvillea drifted into the kitchen through the French doors. Her Cavalier King Charles Spaniels spotted the open doors and shot through them, out into the backyard.
Nikki frowned, glancing in the direction of the escapees, then peered into the fridge: foie gras, hummus, star fruit, duck eggs. No plain old peanut butter and jelly here. She sighed. She wasn’t really hungry, just bored. Friday night, all dressed up in sweatpants and a ratty tee, and nowhere to go.
“A hundred thousand American lives?” cried the voice of Victoria Bordeaux, silver screen goddess of the fifties and sixties.
“Gone.” There was a snap of a thumb and an index finger. “In a fiery explosion that’ll be felt for a thousand miles in every direction.”
“Please tell me you’re not getting on that train, Dirk. You’ll die!”
Cocking her head to hear better, Nikki let the refrigerator door close.
I should write a book,
she thought.
Because no one could make this crap up.
“Probably, but I have to try. Otherwise, I couldn’t live with myself,” came the dramatic male voice.
“Let me go, too!” cried Victoria. “Maybe I could disarm the bomb myself!”
“And risk our unborn child’s life? Out of the question.”
Nikki stepped out onto the stone terrace and heard the sound of Lynyrd Skynyrd wafting in the air . . . which made for an interesting musical score for the scene unfolding in her mother’s Beverly Hills backyard. “Marshall?”
“Shht!” Victoria warned, bringing a manicured finger to her pale peach lips. She was dressed in a white Michael Kors jogging suit, her platinum hair tied up in a cute silk scarf, and her trademark pearls on her slender throat. This was
her
Friday night staying-in attire, versus Nikki’s. Victoria Bordeaux was one classy lady.
Victoria sat on a chaise longue, her legs stretched out, with pink foam spacers between her bare toes. She held a script in her hand, reading glasses perched on her nose. “A kiss! One more kiss before you go. Oh, Dirk, I can’t believe you’re going to get on that train.”
“What the heck are you two
doing
?” Nikki asked, glancing at Marshall, her dearest, nearest friend.
Marshall Thunder, recently voted Sexiest Man Alive by
People
magazine, and box office boy wonder, drew a brush over Victoria’s delicate toenail. The nail polish was pink. “Just one kiss.” He pursed his lips. At six-foot-two, the forty-two-year-old Native American had one of those hard bodies that could have launched a thousand ships. A thousand ships of screaming, fainting female fans. And his face . . . a chiseled masterpiece with dark eyes and high cheekbones.
Victoria, probably thirty years Marshall’s senior—Nikki didn’t know exactly how old her mother was, and Victoria wasn’t telling; her birth records were
allegedly
lost in a hospital fire in Idaho—pursed her lips and kissed the air.
“Tell our son I loved him.” Marshall spoke the words poignantly as he grabbed an orange stick from the basket at his feet and touched up the polish on one of Victoria’s toenails. “Good-bye, my love.”
Victoria drew her hand over her forehead, fluttered her eyelids, and lay back in the chair in what would have been a swoon in her early days in cinema. “No, noooo.”
“Mother! Marshall!” Nikki looked at one and then the other. “What are you
doing
?” She glanced around as the seventies Southern rock song got louder. “And where is that music coming from?”
Victoria opened her eyes and sat up, pulling off her reading glasses. “What does it look like we’re doing, Nicolette? My pedicurist cancelled my appointment and one can’t very well go the entire weekend with chipped polish. Marshall kindly offered to do my pedicure and manicure for me.” She smiled her perfect smile, flashing the Bordeaux blue eyes she was still famous for, even after years in retirement. Then she scowled. “The music is coming from next door. The Bernards’. Where else?”
“She’s going over my script with me,” Marshall explained. He glanced at Nikki’s bare toes in her worn flip-flops. “I could do yours, too, sweetie.” He lifted a dark eyebrow. “Your feet look awful. When was the last time you had a pedicure?”
Nikki dropped into one of the chairs and tried to nonchalantly hide the foot from which she’d scraped the polish off her toenail with a fingernail while on the phone. “I’ve been busy.”
Her mother lifted her eyebrows.
Victoria was never seen in public without her hair done and makeup on her face. She didn’t own a single ratty t-shirt or, God forbid, a pair of baggy sweatpants. It just wasn’t in her genetic composition.
“Don’t tell me you’re doing this movie, Marshall.” Nikki motioned to the script, trying to shift their attention to anything or anyone but her toes. She loved her mother, sometimes even adored her, but Nikki didn’t find it easy to be Victoria Bordeaux’s daughter. While gracious to her fans, Victoria could be critical of those closest to her, particularly Nikki. And Nikki, admittedly, could get defensive. The friction between them seemed worse since she’d been forced to move back in with her mother after a major water main break in her own home, followed by a painting disaster. Marshall had come for the evening, at Nikki’s request, to serve as a buffer. He and Victoria
always
got along; he never took offense at anything she said. “That script’s awful,” Nikki observed.
“It’s not so bad. I’m going to do it if Zoe what’s-her-name does. It’s going to be the hit of next summer, with or without me.” Marshall screwed the cap back on the pink nail polish. “Let’s let that dry a few minutes, and then we’ll add a clear coat.” He sat back and relaxed, returning his attention to Nikki. He was wearing a pair of corduroy shorts, a tight surfer tee, and Gucci sunglasses, making him look even hunkier than usual. (Of course, it was sunset. Only stars wore sunglasses in the dark.) “It might as well be me.”
“I thought you were going to take a break.” She found herself mouthing the words to “Freebird” as the song continued to blast from next door. “You said you and Rob talked it over and agreed you were working too hard. That when you finished the film you’re shooting, you were taking a year off.”
“Year off, shmear off.” He waved his hand dismissively. “But don’t tell Rob I said that,” he warned, pointing his finger at her. “It’s a delicate subject. I feel like I need to work while I can. You know how fickle fans can be. A year from now the only offers I might be getting could be made-for-TV movies and OxiClean commercials.”
“I’ll drink to that.” Victoria raised a margarita glass and sipped from it.
Victoria liked her evening cocktails and Marshall liked making them for her. They were best buddies, these two. An interesting combination: the retired screen goddess and the still-in-the-closet blockbuster action star.
“What’s going on next door?” Nikki asked, glancing around to see what mischief her
boys
were getting into. Stanley, a black, white, and tan tri, was on the trail of some bug or rodent, his nose to the ground. Oliver, a Blenheim, had parked himself under a hydrangea bush and was busying himself grooming his tail. “Has it been going on for long? I didn’t hear the music from inside.”
“We already worked our way through the
Nuthin’ Fancy
album. We’ve moved on to their (Pronounced ‘L
h-’nérd ‘Skin-’nérd) album. It was their first.”
Nikki looked to Marshall, duly impressed. “Hey, you know your Skynyrd.”
He grinned. “Rob has all their albums, on vinyl.”
Victoria cocked her ear in the direction of the Bernard mansion next door, then shook her head in irritation. “I told Abe that he’d better get control of his worthless son. I warned him, next time Eddie threw one of his parties and disturbed my peace and quiet, I was calling the cops. It’s only a matter of time before his guests start climbing over the wall and crushing my begonias.”
Their neighbor, Abe Bernard, was probably the best television writer and producer in Hollywood, certainly the most successful. His company, Bernard Television, reported higher earnings the previous year than the late Aaron Spelling’s company. His current law drama had hit number one in the Nielsen ratings, two years running. While Abe was one of the most respected, most revered names in Hollywood, his thirty-five-year-old son was a loser. Eddie Bernard had tried his hand at being a model, an actor, and a businessman, all unsuccessfully. Eddie drank too much, had a drug problem, and was constantly in trouble with the law: drunk driving, possession of illegal substances, assault. So far, his father’s money had been able to keep him out of a lengthy jail sentence, but the guy was bad news. He had none of the integrity or work ethic of his father.
“You’re not going to call the cops, Mother,” Nikki said dryly. “You always threaten, but you’d never do it.”
“True. I don’t have much use for the police.” She waved a delicate hand. “No offense meant toward Rob,” she told Marshall.
“No offense taken.” He smiled sweetly.
Nikki noticed her mother was wearing the Howard Hughes sapphire ring: platinum, 3 carats, art deco, studded with very high-clarity diamonds. Hughes had given her several nice pieces of jewelry back in the day when he’d been trying to woo her to RKO Studios. Nikki had the feeling there had been more than business wooing going on there, but for decades, Victoria had remained calmly but firmly silent on the matter.
“I’ve never forgiven them,” Victoria continued, “for the way you were treated that time you were picked up for—”
“Mother,” Nikki interrupted. “Could we not talk about that?”
Victoria crossed her legs at the ankles and took another drink of her margarita. “You’re certainly touchy this evening. Where’s Jeremy? You should be out dining and dancing with your beau, not sitting around the pool with an old lady and her favorite bear.”
Nikki and Marshall made eye contact. Nikki lifted an eyebrow.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Victoria said, which was as close to swearing as she ever came. “I know what a
bear
is: a big, burly, man.” She waved in Marshall’s direction, frowning. “Although, I suppose they’re supposed to be hairy, too.”
“Weren’t Eddie and Lindsay Lohan in rehab together?” Marshall artfully started a new topic of conversation and ran with it. “I thought I read that somewhere.”
“In one of your tabloids?” Nikki asked. “You, of all people, know you can’t believe a word they print.”
“I read regular newspapers, too,” he defended. “Just not about this,” he added in a very small voice. “But this was his third or fourth stint in rehab in the last five years.”
“Conniving, worthless little punk,” Victoria muttered. “He’s like the nephew in
Fifteen Green Street
. Remember that film I did with Willi Wyler?”
“The one set in New Orleans?” Marshall clutched his hands over his heart. “I adored you in that film. You were
so
beautiful. So strong-willed, right to the end. Do you remember that green gown you wore in the dinner scene, you know, when you discovered that your nephew had had your sister committed so he could take over the family business?”
Victoria smiled at the memory. “It was Persian silk. And that emerald necklace I wore—”
“Exquisite,” Marshall finished for her, both of them lost in the moment.
“Were you nominated for an Oscar that year, Mother?”
Victoria’s smile tightened. “No. And Julie Andrews ended up winning for
Mary Poppins
, of all things. But Audrey Hepburn wasn’t nominated for
My Fair Lady
, either. I don’t know what the Academy was thinking.”
Nikki smiled. “You always said—”
The sound of an explosion next door cut Nikki off. She shot out of her chair, looking at Marshall. “Was that—”
“A gunshot!”

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