Jaine Austen 4 - Shoes to Die For (18 page)

For a disgraceful instant I considered accepting her invitation. I happen to be particularly fond of the Colonel’s cuisine. But I was about to accuse the woman of murder. I couldn’t very well say,
Pass the wings, and by the way, did you bump off Frenchie?

“Actually, Maxine, I came to ask you something about the murder.”

“Oh?”

Was it my imagination, or did I see her stiffen?

“Becky says that several months ago, you borrowed her car.”

“That’s right. Mine was in the shop, and I had an important periodontal appointment. My gums were bleeding something awful. So Becky loaned me her car.”

“Becky says you never gave her back her spare key.”

“Oh, gosh. That’s right. I forgot all about it,” she said, jumping up from the recliner. “I’ll go get it. It’s got to be in my purse somewhere.”

She scurried off and seconds later came back with a large brown tote.

“I carry so much junk in here,” she said, rummaging through its contents. “Here it is. It was stuck in my pocket pack of Kleenex. I always carry Kleenex in my purse. And floss, too. One time I got a piece of shrimp stuck in my teeth; it was just awful. Ever since then I never leave home without floss in my purse.

“But I don’t understand,” she said, handing me the key. “What does this key have to do with Frenchie’s murder?”

I took a deep breath. This wasn’t going to be easy. I’d forgotten how fragile she was. Was I really going to accuse this little mouse of murder?

Then I steeled myself.

“Maxine, you didn’t by any chance happen to drive Becky’s car to Passions the night of the murder, did you?”

Much to my surprise, Maxine didn’t fall apart. On the contrary, her face clouded over in anger.

“I already told you,” she said, her jaw clenched. “I didn’t kill Frenchie.”

So. The mouse had some backbone, after all.

“What if I told you I had an eyewitness who saw a woman matching your description getting out of Becky’s car that night?”

Now technically, I wasn’t lying. I didn’t actually say I
had
an eyewitness; I just asked her what she’d say if I had one.

“Whoever told you that is lying!” Her face flushed with anger. “I did
not
take Becky’s car to Passions that night! I took my own!”

Then she gasped as she realized what she’d just blurted out. And suddenly, the anger was gone; the mouse was back. She looked scared to death.

“I think you’d better tell me about it,” I said.

“If I do, will you tell the police?”

“Not unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

I sat there, trying my best to look trustworthy.

“All right,” she said, finally.

She slumped down in the recliner and began stroking the comatose Sparkles.

“I couldn’t sleep that night. I couldn’t stop thinking about how badly Frenchie had treated me. I decided to fix the account books, so she wouldn’t be able to cheat Grace out of the store. At about two
A.M
., I drove over to Passions. But when I got there, Frenchie was already dead. I’ll never forget that horrible sight as long as I live. I didn’t stay to fix the books. I just ran. And that’s the truth. I swear, I didn’t kill her.”

And then she burst into tears.

“You do believe me, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I said.

And at that moment, I did. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t a killer. Maybe all it meant was that I was a gullible softie and she was a damn good liar.

Then I handed her a Kleenex from her pocket pack and walked out the door.

Let’s do a head count of all the people who showed up at Passions the night of the murder, shall we?

First there was Becky, who went back to get her designs. Then there were Grace and Amanda, who came to do Lord knows what. And now there was Maxine, who claimed she was there to re-cook the books. If any more people had shown up, they would’ve had to take a number.

I drove back home to Beverly Hills, making a pit stop at KFC. I’d had a craving for the Colonel’s chicken ever since Maxine mentioned it. And I hadn’t had a thing to eat since my croissants at breakfast, so I was starving.

Prozac sprang to attention when I walked through the door. That cat can smell chicken cooking in Nevada. She practically opened the bucket herself.

As she howled around my ankles, I cut up some bite-sized bits of chicken and put them in her bowl. Then I settled down on the living room sofa with the bucket in my lap. I was just reaching for my second thigh when the phone rang. Remembering Prozac and the Case of the Purloined Roast Chicken, I took the bucket with me to answer the phone.

It was Kandi.

“So,” she said, without any preamble, “what are you going to wear?”

“What am I going to wear where?”

“On your sunset cruise.”

Damn. Today was my date with Darrell, the speed-dating sailor, and I’d forgotten all about it.

Kandi sighed theatrically. “You forgot all about it, didn’t you?”

“Okay, so I forgot. Big deal.”

“Yes, it
is
a big deal. How do you expect to wind up in a relationship if you can’t even remember that you’ve got a date?”

“But I don’t care if I wind up in a relationship.”

“Of course you do. It’s subliminal. You just don’t realize it.”

Now it was my turn to sigh. “I’m supposed to meet Darrell at the marina at four. It’s almost three now. I’d better hang up and get ready.”

“Good luck, sweetie. And wish me luck, too.”

“Why? Where are you going?”

“On a date with Anton.”

“Anton?”

“The New Age performance artist I met at Starbucks. He invited me to see his act.”

“What does he do? Play Beethoven’s Fifth on the espresso machine?”

“Très amusing, Jaine. I don’t know what he does exactly. But whatever it is, I’m sure it’ll be fantastic.”

What can I tell you? Look up “optimist” in the dictionary, and there’s a picture of Kandi. Look up “pessimist,” and there’s a picture of me. And just my luck, it’ll be unflattering.

“This is so great,” she said. “You’re going out with your dream guy, and I’m going out with mine. It’s like a spiritual double date.”

“Kandi, how do you know he’s your dream guy? You barely know him.”

“I can tell. I’ve got an instinct for these things.”

Yeah, right. When it comes to men, Kandi’s instincts are about as reliable as a broken alarm clock.

“So aren’t you going to wish me good luck?” she asked.

After wishing her gobs of good luck (something told me she was going to need it), I hung up and looked down into my bucket of golden fried chicken. I had a choice. I could either finish the bucket and show up for my date with a bloated tummy, or I could do the sensible thing and put the chicken in the refrigerator.

For once—alert the media!—I did the sensible thing. Honest. I put the bucket in the fridge. You can ask Prozac if you don’t believe me.

I spent the next twenty minutes trying on outfits. I finally decided on jeans and a red T-shirt, topped off by a blue blazer and white sneakers. I was going for the natty-nautical look.

After brushing my teeth and gargling vigorously, I proceeded to slap on some makeup and blow out the curls from my bangs. I had no idea what the frizz factor would be like out at the marina, so I blasted my freshly straightened bangs with a helmet of hair spray. I threw the can of hair spray in my purse, just in case I ran into a passing fog bank.

My toilette complete, I said good-bye to Prozac, who was stretched out on the sofa, in a post-Colonel stupor.

“How do I look, Pro?” I said, twirling around for her approval.

She looked at me through slitted eyes.

Give me some more chicken, and I’ll tell you you look great,
was what I think she was trying to say.

“No more chicken for you, young lady. And don’t try any funny stuff. I don’t want to see any paw prints on the refrigerator when I come home.”

Then I blew her a kiss and headed off for my date with Darrell, the speed-dating yachtsman.

Chapter 19

I
tooled out to the marina in my nautical togs and enough hair spray on my head to poke a hole in the ozone layer. But as it turns out, I didn’t need the hair spray. It was a glorious low-humidity day. Sometimes when it’s glorious in Beverly Hills, it’s Fog Central out by the water. But today it was magnificent all the way out to the beach.

I put a Cesaria Evora tape in my CD player and drove with the music blasting. Much to my surprise I was actually looking forward to this date. It felt good to get away from the murder for a while.

I parked at the slip where Darrell said he’d meet me. There was only one boat moored there. A fabulous yachtlike vessel, a symphony of gleaming wood and polished brass.

Did this floating bit of heaven actually belong to Darrell? Was my Bad Dating Karma finally about to be broken? Was this an end to the guys who brought calculators to dinner to split the bill? I suddenly felt an enormous surge of hope. Maybe Kandi was right. Maybe underneath it all, I really did want a relationship.

Then suddenly I heard someone call my name.

“Jaine!”

I looked at the yacht but there was no one in sight.

“Jaine! Over here.”

I turned and saw a clunky gray hulk of a boat, with a Port of Los Angeles insignia on the side, pulling into the slip.

And there on deck was a muscular guy with close-cropped sandy hair who I vaguely recognized from speed dating.

“It’s me! Darrell!” he said, waving eagerly.

Amazingly enough, he looked like a normal human being. Which just goes to show how you can’t judge a book by its cover. Or in this case, a schnook by its cover.

“Ahoy, matey!” he shouted. “Welcome to
The Trashy Lady!”

He hurried over to the railing to greet me.

“We call her
The Trashy Lady
because we patrol the harbor picking up garbage.”

“You do what??”

“We pick up garbage. It’s a garbage boat.”

It looked like my Bad Dating Karma was alive and kicking.

“Actually, I just drove out to tell you I can’t make our date. My cat’s having emergency abdominal surgery.”

That’s what I should have said. But fool that I am, I just smiled and said, “Nice to meet you.”

“Hop aboard!”

And he did mean hop.
The Trashy Lady
was surrounded by a three-foot-high railing. I stared at it, dismayed. The last time I’d done any serious hopping was in sixth-grade gym class. And even then, I wasn’t very good at it.

“C’mon,” he said. “Climb over.”

Easy for him to say.

I spent the next few minutes with my fanny in the air, trying to hoist myself over that dratted railing.

“Let me help,” he said, grabbing me by the waist.

“This is awfully embarrassing.”

“Not a problem. I’m used to hauling heavy objects.”

After depositing me on the deck like a beached walrus, Darrell introduced me to his partner, Bernie, a grizzly guy with a chewed-up cigar hanging from his mouth.

“It’s just the two of us on the crew,” Darrell explained. “Bernie mans the boat, and I rake in the garbage.”

“Pleased to meetcha,” Bernie said, chomping on his cigar. Then he shot me a pitying look and disappeared behind the controls.

Bernie revved up the motor, and seconds later, the
SS Trashy Lady
set sail amid the stench of rotting garbage.

“Smells pretty stinky, doesn’t it?” Darrell grinned. “Sorry about that. After an hour or so, you’ll get used to it.”

Then he reached into a filthy knapsack. “I brought us refreshments.”

He tossed me a can of Orange Crush and a package of peanut butter crackers.

Yum.

He broke open his package of crackers and started eating. The man had enough dirt under his fingernails to plant a rose garden.

“Say,” he said, with a suggestive wink. “Want to see my tool?”

I wondered if I could possibly leap over the rail and swim back to shore.

Before I knew it, he’d whipped out his “tool,” the rakelike contraption he used to collect trash.

“You’d be amazed at the stuff we pick up,” he said.

Revolted was more like it. For the next two hours, I watched as Darrell used his “tool” to reel in a colorful assortment of condoms, inner tubes, abandoned underwear, and—the highlight of the voyage—a dead sewer rat. All the while, he regaled me with fascinating tales of
Amazingly Gross Stuff I’ve Found on My Job.

“I’ll never forget the time we towed in a bathtub with a decomposing body strapped inside. Wow, talk about stinking to high heaven. Phew!…Hey, how come you’re not eating your crackers?”

“I’m not very hungry.”

“You’re not seasick, are you? Don’t worry if you have to throw up. Most of my dates usually do.”

After assuring him I was fit as a fiddle, Darrell resumed the saga of his life as a maritime garbageman.

“Of course, not everything I find is junk. I’ve picked up some very valuable items. Like a Barbie doll I once found. It was good as new, once I got the jellyfish out of her hair. I gave it to my niece. She loved it.”

By now I realized Darrell didn’t expect me to keep up my end of the conversation. He was perfectly happy reeling in trash and performing his monologue. So I just kept on nodding, like one of those stuffed animals with wobbly necks you see in the rear windows of cars.

“Hey, here’s an interesting find,” Darrell said, picking up something from the garbage hold. “A dead starfish.”

I watched as he plucked a condom from one of its tentacles.

“Would you like to keep it? As a souvenir of our first date?”

“No, thanks. It’s lovely, but my cat is allergic to starfish.”

“You have a cat? I’ve got a pet, too. A snake. Betsy. I found her on garbage patrol. Poor thing was barely alive but I nursed her back to health.”

And so it went, on and on for two mind-numbing hours. I just sat there, an idiotic grin plastered on my face, breathing in the bracing sea air laced with the scent of decomposing garbage. What more could a girl want?

It was toward the end of our cruise, when the sun was starting to set, when Darrell said, “Darn. I almost forgot. I brought you a pair of binoculars, so you could see the sights.”