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Authors: Cheryl Crane

BOOK: Imitation of Death
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Chapter 2
N
ikki sprinted in the direction of the sound of the gunshot.
Marshall was right behind her.
“Nicolette!” Victoria warned. But she was already out of the chaise, too. For a woman in her seventies, in sandals, with a fresh pedicure, she was surprisingly agile.
Nikki ran across the side lawn toward the gate between Victoria’s property and the Bernards’. Years ago, when Abe had demolished his quaint two-story colonial, bought the property on the other side of him, and built the French Regency mansion they lived in now, he had put up an eight-foot-high wrought-iron fence and had large hedges planted on his side. Because his longtime neighbor was
the
Victoria Bordeaux, he’d added a gate between the two properties that could be latched from either side. Nikki pushed through the gate. Lynyrd Skynyrd was even louder on the other side of the fence.
“Mother, stay here,” Nikki huffed. “Stay with the dogs. Latch the gate, Marshall.”
“I’m not
staying with the dogs
,” Victoria intoned, barely out of breath. (Beyond amazing, considering her age and the fact that she’d been smoking for more than fifty years.)
Marshall closed the gate behind them as Nikki ran in the direction from which she’d heard the shot. The backyard was crowded; there were easily more than a hundred people in and gathered around the pool. More
guests
lounged on chairs in front of the guesthouse where Abe’s ex-wife lived. There were glasses everywhere, a bar set up on the patio near the house. The smell of cannabis was thick in the evening air.
“Did you hear that?” a platinum and silicone blonde in a string bikini asked Nikki as she ran in the same direction. “Was it a bomb?”
“The driveway. It came from the driveway,” her companion, who looked like she was wearing three cocktail napkins, insisted excitedly.
Nikki glanced over her shoulder. The minute they came through the gate, Victoria had slowed to a respectable trot. In her mind, once she passed through the gate, she was in public and became the iconic Victoria Bordeaux.
Someone pointed at her; someone else whipped out a cell phone to take a picture. Victoria would, no doubt, be on Facebook within seconds. Though most of the partiers appeared to be under forty (some looked like they were under fourteen) everyone seemed to recognize Victoria Bordeaux, even in a jogging suit. Must have been the Mikimoto Akoya pearls.
A female squealed and Nikki realized Marshall had been recognized. How could anyone miss a six-foot-two, Native American movie star, even in dark sunglasses and a ball cap?
As Nikki came around the front corner of the three-story French Regency mansion, she stopped short. She spotted Eddie Bernard, a young Hispanic woman, her mother’s gardener, Jorge, and Jorge’s brother-in-law, Hector, standing between a Mercedes and an Aston Martin in the middle of the motor court. Eddie and Jorge were slowly circling each other as if in a boxing ring. Eddie had some sort of automatic pistol in his hand.
Not
generally seen in a boxing ring. But Eddie was a known gun aficionado. In Eddie’s circles, a party just wasn’t a party if
someone
wasn’t brandishing a gun.
“You going to shoot me in front of all these witnesses, Eddie?” Jorge taunted. “Are you?” Jorge was a nice looking man with dark, lush hair, medium-toned skin, and a well-toned body. He was only Nikki’s height, five-ten, but muscular. He waved his fingertips toward his own chest and tilted his head back, the unmistakable gesture for
bring it on
.
Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Simple Man” wailed in the background:
Mama told me when I was young . . .
“Jorge!” Nikki called as she pushed her way to the front of the crowd. Jorge wasn’t
just
Victoria’s gardener. He was her housekeeper Ina’s son, and one of Nikki’s best friends from childhood. She and Jorge had grown up together; they’d practiced kissing on each other, in preparation for the real thing.
“
Hermano
,” Hector said quietly. He was a short man, no more than five-foot-five, but thick and brawny with a face badly scarred from acne he’d had as a teenager. “He ain’t worth it, man.” He cut his eyes at the young Hispanic woman. “Get out of here, Ree.”
“Nikki, stay out of this,” Jorge warned, barely glancing in her direction.
He’d been working in the front lawn clipping azalea bushes with a big pair of pruning shears when Nikki had glanced out her upstairs window half an hour ago. Hector, who worked for Jorge, had been raking.
“Eddie, sweetie, put away the gun.” Eddie’s mother, Melinda, Abe’s ex-wife, stood opposite Nikki. At sixty, she was attractive for her age: slightly plump, with white-blond hair below her shoulders and only minimal plastic surgery. She was wearing denim capris and a cute age-appropriate blouse. “Please, Eddie. Your parole,” she whispered under her breath, softly enough so that only those closest could hear.
And listen closely to what I say . . .
The Skynyrd lyrics, Melinda’s plea . . . it would have been funny had there not been a loaded gun and male tempers involved.
“Mind your own business, Jorge,” the drop-dead gorgeous young Hispanic woman spat. “Go back to your lawn mower.” She was wearing cheap platform sandals and something that could only be described as
hotpants
. Unlike Jorge, she had a heavy Mexican accent.
. . . some sunny day . . .
Nikki saw blood on the young woman’s split lip and realized someone had hit her. Recently. As in, the last few minutes.
Nikki’s quick assessment of the situation told her it was Eddie. He was known to be
heavy-handed
in a relationship; he’d been arrested the previous year for assault against a girlfriend. That happened with Eddie a lot. He was charged with a criminal offense, but there never seemed to be serious consequences for his behavior; Nikki had always suspected it had something to do with his father’s net worth.
And Jorge didn’t hit women; Ina had raised him better.
“Jorge, what’s going on?” Nikki demanded.
Jorge held up his hand. His suntanned face was bright red with anger. His green t-shirt with the Jorge & Son logo on it was ripped at the neckline. It hadn’t been ripped when Nikki waved to him through the window a short time ago.
“Hector’s right. You don’t want to do this with him,” Nikki warned, taking a step closer, trying to get Jorge to look at her. “Not with him, like this,” she murmured, noting Eddie seemed twitchy, his pupils too big.
“And him having a
gun
,” Marshall said under his breath from behind her.
Nikki glanced over her shoulder, and was relieved to see that Marshall was holding Victoria back by the hood of her Michael Kors, which was good, because knowing her mother, the woman might have gone into the middle of the fighting ring. Both Victoria and Marshall were now attracting plenty of attention. The partiers didn’t know in which direction to gawk—at the gunfight or the honest-to-goodness stars. More people whipped out their cell phones to get candid pictures of Victoria and Marshall.
The crowd seemed to press against Nikki as she moved closer to Jorge. She had to get him out of here before something bad happened to one or both of them.
Fact one, Jorge was a hothead. Fact two, Eddie was obviously high. (So much for Dr. Drew and rehab in Pasadena.) Fact three, and perhaps the biggest mitigating factor, was that the two had hated each other since they were all kids. Jorge had always been jealous of the rich white boy who had everything and was always willing to throw it away. Eddie . . . he just liked picking on sons of Mexican immigrant housekeepers. Self-esteem issues out the yin-yang.
“Eddie, please,” Melinda begged. She rested her hand on her son’s arm, her fingernails, always filed too pointy for Nikki’s liking, sinking into his flesh a little. “Don’t do this. This is all behind you now.”
Eddie pushed his mother away, none too gently. He was of average height, average looks, with a three-hundred-dollar Daddy’s-money haircut and muscles that came and went depending on how much time he spent at the gym. It looked like they
went
this time in rehab; he looked pudgy and bloated. What he really looked like was a punk headed for jail and the tabloids again.
“Hey!” Jorge growled, flexing his hands into fists at his sides. “Didn’t I just tell you to keep your hands off women?”
“This is none of your business, Jorge,” Ree shouted, playing the tough girl.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Ree,” Jorge growled. “Letting him treat you this way. Shaming our family. And you, Eddie,”—he thrust out his chest like a rooster—“how can you do this? After everything your parents have done for you. How long have you been out of rehab? A week? Less than a week, and you’re already drunk and coked up?”
Eddie sniffed and ran the back of his hand over his mouth. He quickly looked left, then right, as if paranoid. Unfortunately, Jorge’s observation was accurate. Nikki could practically
see
the white powder under his nose.
“Just put the gun away,” Nikki said evenly, trying to sound calm, even if she was shaking inside. Guns did that to her; she didn’t like guns. She raised both hands. “You don’t want to hurt Jorge, Eddie. You don’t want to hurt anyone.”
Eddie’s hand holding the pistol fell slack to his side. “You can’t tell me what to do,” he told Jorge, his words sharply punctuated. “She’s my girlfriend. This is none of your business.”
“I’m not your girlfriend, Eddie, you stupid fu—”
“I don’t care what she is to you,” Jorge erupted, pointing accusingly, “but if I ever see you hit a woman again, I swear to God, Eddie, I’ll kill you.” He raised his fist. “Maybe I ought to kill you anyway.”
A hush fell over the crowd as everyone waited to see who would do what, next.
“Give that to me.” Melinda put out her hand. “Eddie, give me that thing before you hurt yourself or one of your friends.”
Nikki was surprised by Melinda’s backbone. She hadn’t known Melinda had it in her. Watching her now, Nikki felt sorry for her. Melinda had spent the last thirty-some years of her life running after Eddie, trying to keep him from harming himself or others.
Melinda took the pistol from her son’s hand and held it by the handle, between two fingers, as if it were something infectious.
“What the hell is going on here?” shouted a woman from the street end of the motor court as she marched through the open gates. Nikki looked up to see Ginny Bernard, Eddie’s stepmother, barreling up the front driveway in Jimmy Choo heels and a short skirt. Gucci and Prada shopping bags hung off her arms.
“I couldn’t even pull in to park in my own driveway! I thought I told you no more parties,” Ginny screeched, pointing. She was attractive with below-the-shoulders blond hair precisely the same color as Melinda’s, and a knock-out body. Nikki had always thought it interesting that when Abe replaced his wife after more than thirty years of marriage, he had done so with a younger version of Melinda. Ten years younger.
“Melinda! How did you let this happen?” Ginny demanded. “He just got out of rehab!”
“How did
I
let it happen?” Melinda, who had passed the pistol to someone else, pressed her hand to her chest. “You think I wanted this?”
Ginny took one look at her stepson’s face and shook her head. “You’re high. One week out of rehab, and you’re partying? At my house? I swear to God, Eddie, if your father doesn’t kill you this time, I will.”
Eddie spit something under his breath and twitched again. Melinda grabbed her son’s arm.
“Where is he?” Ginny gave Melinda a sour look and pranced away, her Jimmy Choos clicking on the pavement. “Abe! Abraham! Do you have any idea what’s going on out here?” She slammed her fist down on the Aston Martin as she went by it.
“Jorge,” Nikki said quietly, leaning toward him. “It’s over. Walk away.” With Ginny here now, the circus could definitely go three-ring. The police would be at the gates next.
“I won’t stand by and see my cousin get hit by this worthless
bastardo
.” Jorge made a sound and spat on the driveway as if disgusted by Eddie’s very presence.
Eddie rose to the bait. “Come on,
Chico
, you wanna try to take me?” He began posturing, and sneering, his shoulders thrown back, making him look like the complete ass that he was.
Of course, Jorge wasn’t looking all that rational right now, either.
Nikki linked her arm through Jorge’s. He smelled of freshly cut grass and aftershave.
Jorge resisted for a second, then let Nikki pull him away. Hector moved in to walk on Jorge’s other side.
Jorge whipped back around. “Go home, Ree! And don’t come back. I don’t want to see you here. You’re not to ever see Eddie Bernard again!”
“Who do you think you are, Mr. High and Mighty?” the young woman shouted after him, the disdain thick in her accented voice. “You’re not my father—”
“What
would
your father think?” Jorge snapped back, his anger seeming to rise and bubble over again. “God rest his soul.” He crossed himself.

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