Killing Cupid (A Jaine Austen Mystery) (16 page)

Chapter 26

T
he next morning, after reading about Mom’s miraculous recovery of her Valentine’s ring from her (machine washable!) Georgie O. Armani jacket, I made my way up the block to my Corolla.

In the bright light of day, my street seemed like a set out of Wisteria Lane. Lots of green grass and lilac bushes and birds chirping gaily in the trees. A far cry from the nightmare alley it had been less than twelve hours ago.

And you can imagine how foolish I felt when I saw a freckle-faced teenager getting into the black Jeep that had sent me running to my apartment in such a panic.

So much for the killer following me home.

I really had to stop overreacting if I expected to continue my career as a part-time semi-professional PI.

At my Corolla, I inspected the dent on my left rear fender. It was rather unsightly, but on the plus side, it matched the dent on my right rear fender.

Eagerly, I grabbed Prozac’s Kitty Katz Kollar from the back seat and hurried back to my apartment to show it to her.

“Look what Mommy bought you,” I said, waving it under her nose.

A disdainful sniff from Her Majesty.

I tried to fasten it around her neck, but all I got for my troubles was a nasty scratch on my wrist.

When last I saw it, she was batting it around like a dead mouse.

 

Benjamin’s was an upscale hair salon in the heart of Brentwood, the kind of place that catered to privileged housewives killing time between Botox shots.

The good news is that I found a parking spot right outside their front door.

The bad news is that Benjamin’s receptionist saw me getting out of my freshly dented Corolla.

She blinked in surprise as I walked into the tony salon.

“Hi there,” she said, a dewy-eyed twentysomething waiting for her big movie break. “You sure you’re not looking for a Supercuts?”

Okay, what she really said was, “How may I help you?” but I could read between the lines.

“I’m here to see Cassie.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“No, but—”

“Sorry,” she said, gliding a perfectly manicured fingernail down her schedule sheet. “She’s booked all day.”

“I just need to talk to her for a few minutes. It’s very important.”

“How about next Tuesday at ten? Shall I put you down you for a Complete Day of Beauty? If anyone could use one, it’s you.”

Okay, so she didn’t say that last part. But trust me, she was thinking it.

“I can’t wait till Tuesday. I need to talk to Cassie now.”

And without waiting for permission, I barged into the salon, where I spotted Cassie with a customer.

How odd to see the purple-haired pixie here in the land of Botoxed blondes. But there she was, snipping away at the locks of a brittle forty-something who looked like she was on her way to a DAR meeting.

“Jaine,” Cassie cried, catching sight of me. “What are you doing here?”

The starlet/receptionist, who’d been hot on my heels, now piped up: “I told her you were busy, but she wouldn’t listen.”

“Cassie, we need to talk.”

“I can’t now, Jaine. I’m with a customer.”

“It’s about your mom,” I whispered. “And Joy Amoroso.”

A flush crept up her chalk-white cheeks.

“What’s going on?”

I turned to see a tall, skinny guy in a ponytail and designer cowboy gear. From the big brass “B” on his belt buckle, I assumed he was Benjamin.

“Hey,” he said, looking me over. “Are you one of the
Don’t
models the agency is sending over for my
Beauty Do’s & Don’ts
ad?”

“No,” I snapped with more than a hint of frost in my voice, “I am not one of your Beauty Don’ts.”

Cassie quickly jumped in.

“Jaine’s a friend of mine. She just stopped by to pick up something she left in my car.”

“Too bad,” Benjamin said, walking away. “She’d be a great Don’t.”

The minute he was gone, Cassie turned to me and hissed, “Wait till I’m through with my client. I’ll talk to you then.”

So I spent the next twenty minutes in the reception area, getting dirty looks from the starlet/receptionist and leafing through beauty magazines. I particularly enjoyed a hard-hitting piece of journalism entitled “Ten Ways to Get Your Man Excited in Bed.”

(The correct answer: Hide the remote.)

Finally Cassie was finished with the DAR lady and hustled me through the salon and out a back door into a narrow alley.

“Make it quick, Jaine. I’ve only got a few minutes before my next client shows up.”

I wasted no time getting to the point.

“I know your mother was one of Joy’s former clients. I saw her picture on Joy’s database.”

“What of it?” she asked, with a defiant tilt of her chin.

“I’m guessing Joy treated her pretty shabbily, just like she treated most of her other clients.”

“Shabbily?” She broke out in a bitter laugh. “Joy killed my mother, just as sure as if she’d stuck a knife in her heart.”

Slumping down on the salon’s back door step, she let out a deep sigh.

“You saw how beautiful my mom was. She wasn’t in the movies, but she wanted to be. She tried her hardest, but nothing panned out. Then she got pregnant with me, by some guy she met in one of her acting classes. He broke up with her before I was born and moved to New York. I’ve never even seen him. Not in person, that is. Although I once caught him in the middle of the night on a Hair Club for Men infomercial.

“Anyhow, Mom worked her fanny off trying to earn enough money for the two of us. One day she saw Joy’s ad in the paper. She took every dime she’d saved up and handed it over to Joy, hoping to wind up with some guy who’d take care of both of us. Needless to say, as soon as Joy cashed Mom’s check, she wanted nothing more to do with her. She set her up with one or two dates and then hung her out to dry. And when Mom stopped by the office to complain, Joy reamed into her. She told her she was a loser, that her looks were going fast, and that she’d be lucky if she didn’t wind up a bag lady.

“Mom was a fragile woman, at her breaking point. And Joy pushed her over the edge. After Joy’s tongue-lashing, Mom sank into a deep depression. Three weeks later she killed herself.”

Cassie wiped a tear from her cheek with a bony knuckle.

“And so you killed Joy to avenge your mom’s death,” I said as gently as I could.

She looked up at me, blinking in disbelief.

“Are you crazy? I didn’t kill Joy.”

“Then why did you go to work for her? You can’t expect me to believe you went there simply to take a break from hairdressing.”

“I was collecting evidence against her. I kept records of every shady business transaction, every lie she told, every scam she pulled. I wanted to destroy her business. And, if I played my cards right, send her to jail.

“But I didn’t kill her. Not that I wouldn’t have liked to,” she added wistfully. “I just didn’t have the nerve.”

I didn’t know about that. With her tats and nose ring and black leather biker togs, she looked like a pretty tough cookie to me.

“You can’t seriously think I poisoned that chocolate?” she asked, sensing my skepticism.

“Maybe just a little,” I confessed.

“Oh, for heaven’s sakes. It wasn’t me. It was Tonio.”

So that’s who she’d been protecting yesterday.

“Joy was threatening to turn him over to the authorities.”

“For driving without a license?”

“No way. It was much more serious than that. I heard her tell him she was going to press criminal charges.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that she said he’d be spending the next five to ten years behind bars. If that isn’t motive for murder, I don’t know what is.”

So Tonio was lying when he told me Joy had been threatening to report him to the DMV. Last I checked, you don’t do five to ten for driving without a license.

“I’m sure Tonio killed Joy to shut her up,” Cassie said as she got up to go back into the salon.

And I must confess, I was inclined to agree with her.

Chapter 27

A
fter a pit stop at McDonald’s for
one of their yummy low-calorie Southwest Salads, I headed over to see Tonio.

According to Cassie, he was still living in Joy’s apartment in Westwood. I drove over, taking a chance he’d be home.

There are two kinds of high-rises that line the Wilshire Corridor: Expensive and Ridiculously Expensive. Joy and Tonio’s place was one of the more modest affairs.

No circular driveway. No doorman out front. No marble lobby straight from Versailles. Just a simple buzzer at the front entrance.

I buzzed the apartment marked
AMOROSO
, and seconds later Tonio’s gravelly voice came over the line.

“Who is it?”

“Jaine Austen,” I called out.

I had a lie all prepped and ready to go: I was there to pay a belated condolence call.

But before I had a chance to roll out my whopper he said, “What a coincidence. I was just about to call you. Come on up. I’ve got your paycheck.”

My paycheck? What a darling man. Surely someone so thoughtful couldn’t possibly be a killer, could he?

(I tend to grant automatic sainthood to anyone who hands me a paycheck.)

Tonio greeted me at the door to his fifteenth-floor apartment in jeans and a black T-shirt, the sleeves of which were rolled up to reveal bulging biceps. His normally slicked black hair was tousled and his face was in definite need of a shave.

Very Stanley Kowalski in Mourning.

He led me into a spacious living room with sliding glass doors opening onto a terrace over Wilshire Boulevard. Even fifteen floors up I could hear the traffic whooshing by below.

The place was furnished froufrou ornate, just like Joy’s office, chock-a-block with dainty antiques in peaches and pale green. Tonio stood looming against the petite furniture, a hit man in a china shop.

I followed him to the far end of the room, which had been set up as an office area.

Taking a seat behind an ornate desk, he tore a check from a checkbook and handed it to me.

“Joy’s business account is tied up in probate, so I’m paying you myself.”

Indeed, I looked down and was thrilled to see a check made out to me in the amount of three thousand dollars. From a joint checking account belonging to Joy and Tonio.

“This is really very kind of you,” I said.

By now I was feeling like the heel of the century for suspecting him of murder.

“By the way,” he asked, as I stood there basking in the glow of my money, “how did you get my address?”

“Cassie gave it to me. I felt bad about not spending more time with you at the memorial service, and I wanted to pay a belated condolence call.”

“Oh, right. The memorial service.” His eyes clouded over. “That was a pretty rough day.”

“How are you holding up?”

“I’m managing,” he shrugged.

He picked up a picture of Joy from the desk, the one from her ads, shot through layers of Vaseline, and let out a deep sigh.

“She was the love of my life, and I’m really going to miss her.”

Once more I took in his unshaved beard and tousled hair. Clearly he hadn’t been taking care of himself. It seemed hard to believe that anyone could actually love Joy, but it looked like Tonio was taking her death pretty hard.

“Thanks for stopping by, Jaine,” he said. “I really appreciate it. I’d like to talk some more, but the cleaning lady should be here any minute, and all hell breaks loose once she starts that vacuum.”

He got up to walk me to the door.

I hated to do it, after how nice he’d just been, but I couldn’t leave without questioning him.

“By the way,” I said as we started for the living room, “Cassie told me she heard Joy threatening to turn you over to the police.”

He stopped in his tracks and stared at me in disbelief.

“Are you harping on that again? I already told you, she was going to report me to the DMV for driving without a license.”

“Cassie said she was going to press criminal charges. And that you’d be serving time in jail.”

“I don’t know what the hell that girl is talking about. All that purple hair dye must be affecting her brain,” he said, shaking his head. “I loved Joy, and she loved me. And she wasn’t about to send me off to jail.”

His eyes now filled with tears. Which looked pretty genuine.

I was just about to write Cassie off as a goth goofball who’d gotten her facts wrong when a nubile young bimbette came wandering into the living room in mini-shorts and a halter top.

Something told me she was not the cleaning lady.

“Jasmine!” Tonio cried. “I thought I told you to stay in the bedroom.”

“I got hungry,” she pouted.

I watched as Jasmine sauntered over to the open kitchen area, her fanny jiggling big time in her mini-shorts.

But it wasn’t her fanny that caught my eye. It was the honker sapphire earrings dangling from her ears. I’d seen those earrings before. On Joy Amoroso. She’d been wearing them the night she bumped into me and Skip on our very first date from hell.

Several days later, she’d had one of her snit fits when they’d gone missing, convinced someone from her maid service had stolen them. At the time I thought she was overreacting, that she’d probably misplaced them.

But she’d been right. Her earrings
had
been stolen. Not by her maid service, but by Tonio.

“You ripped off Joy’s earrings!” I blurted out. “That’s why she was going to turn you over to the cops. And that’s why you killed her.”

“I told you not to wear that bling in public!” Tonio shouted to his bimbette, who was now busy opening a carton of yogurt.

“I’m not in public,” she whined. “I’m home with you, sweetpants.”

So much for Joy being the love of his life.

And that tousled hair of his had nothing to do with grief. It was bed head!

“Leave us alone, Jasmine,” he said through gritted teeth. “I need a moment with Jaine.”

“Okay,” she shrugged, sashaying back across the living room to a hallway that undoubtedly led to their bedroom love nest.

“Just FYI,” she added. “We’re almost outta yogurt.”

As she disappeared down the hallway, Tonio turned to me.

Gone was the sensitive mourner who’d greeted me at the door. In his place was a fairly intimidating street thug.

“You say I stole those earrings. I say Joy misplaced them and then I found them after she was dead.”

He smiled an oily smile that made the hairs on my neck stand on end.

“And what I say goes. Even if it’s not exactly the truth.”

He then began advancing on me, forcing me to retreat backward with every step he took.

“Yes, Joy was threatening to turn me over to the cops, but I didn’t kill her. When I went with Joy to her office to beg her not to turn me in, she ate one of her goddamn Godivas, and the candies were fine then. So the chocolate had to have been poisoned after we got back to the party. And after we got back to the party, your boyfriend Skip had me cornered for the rest of the night, yakking about his dead cat. Which meant I couldn’t have poisoned Joy’s chocolate.”

His face was so close to mine, I could smell the Juicy Fruit on his breath.

“Got that, Sherlock? I couldn’t have poisoned the damn chocolate!”

I looked around and suddenly realized I’d backed myself out onto his terrace, fifteen stories above Wilshire Boulevard, the din of traffic loud in my ears.

“If you say a word about the earrings to anybody, you’re history. You understand?”

“I understand,” I squeaked in a terrified whisper.

By now I could feel the cold metal rail of the balcony pushing into my spine.

I saw Tonio look down at the traffic below and flex his rather formidable biceps. For a frightening instant I wondered if he’d changed his mind and decided to get rid of me for good. One push, and I’d be roadkill.

But I wasn’t about to go without a fight. Not now. I had mountains to climb. Flowers to smell. Pizzas to eat.

Before he could make a move, I shoved my way past him, racing back into the living room and out the front door, vowing never again to make accusations against a man with upper arms the size of sandbags.