The Bad Always Die Twice (32 page)

The autopsy report . . . Rob said Rex had fast food in his stomach. A burger and fries and a salad. It wasn’t a salad. It was the lettuce, tomatoes, and onions on his burger. Topped with In & Out’s “special sauce”: Thousand Island dressing.

“Oh, my God,” Nikki muttered. Jessica had run into Rex at the burger joint.

“Mrs. Ramirez,” Nikki said, barely recognizing her own voice. “Does your cousin Loco have a tattoo of a hula dancer?”

The woman looked up, dazed. “Here,” she answered, touching her forearm.

Nikki’s heart tumbled. “Teddy,” she said. “You stay right here. You understand me? You don’t move until the police arrive.”

“Shouldn’t we . . . shouldn’t we be doing CPR or something?” He looked petrified.

“No,” she said, sparing him the gory details of the fatal wound. “He’s dead. Just wait here. Give the police my name and tell them I’ll be right back.”

“Where are you going?” he called after her as she went out the door.

“To see a friend.”

Nikki rang Jessica’s doorbell three times. There was no answer. Where the hell was Jessica? She felt like she needed to get inside. Maybe to have a look around? Maybe just to wait for her. She wasn’t thinking all that clearly. Or maybe too clearly. Surely Ramirez was wrong . . .

Nikki rang Mrs. McCauley’s doorbell and waited as the old woman rolled her way to the door on her walker and went through the same ritual she did every time. Nikki knew the drill by heart.

“I thought you weren’t going to bother me again today,” Mrs. McCauley said as she opened the door.

“Do you have a key to Jessica’s apartment?” Nikki exhaled. “I know you have a key. I need to borrow it.”

“You all right?”

Nikki took a deep breath, closing her eyes for a second. “Mrs. McCauley, please. The key.”

The old woman stared at her for a moment, then rolled away. She came back two minutes later, holding up a key on a Windsor Real Estate key chain. “You have to bring it right back. It’s a big responsibility, having a neighbor’s key. I need it back.”

“I’ll bring it right back,” Nikki said.

She was at Jessica’s door, letting herself in, before she realized she hadn’t even thanked Mrs. McCauley.

In the pristine white living room, nothing seemed out of place. But Nikki didn’t know what she was looking for. The police had combed the apartment for clues. Surely nothing was here to prove or disprove what Ramirez had said. She wandered down the hallway to Jessica’s bedroom. The closet doors were open.

Nikki stared numbly at the clear plastic coffins holding the shoes and handbags. She studied a code on a box containing a pair of snakeskin Gucci heels. The other boxes had three letters, but this box had three letters and a number. J-M-L-4.

J-M-L . . . J-M-L . . .

Jessica’s last boyfriend had been James Mitchell Landon, the fourth. A land mogul. James had given Jessica the snakeskin shoes. Nikki remembered the first night she had flaunted them at an office cocktail party.

J-M-L-4.

It hit her so hard that she found the epiphany almost physically painful.

The code didn’t match shoes with handbags. They were the initials of the men who gave them to her. The expensive shoes and bags weren’t gifts, in Jessica’s eyes. They were trophies.

Nikki looked at the other boxes. She spotted the red Jimmy Choo heels Jessica had worn the night of the party. She grabbed the box off the shelf and opened it, letting the lid fall to the carpet. She picked up a shoe. Something looked different from the night Jessica had worn them.

The box had the code A-R-M printed on it.

Still holding the shoe, Nikki dialed a number on her BlackBerry. “Edith, this is Nikki. Tell me something,” she said into the phone. “Rex’s first name. It wasn’t Rex, was it?”

“Nikki, are you all right? You don’t sound—”

“I may have figured out who killed Rex,” she said numbly. “His first name, Edith?”

“He never wanted anyone to know, but it was Artemis.”

“Artemis,” Nikki repeated, holding up one shoe with a deadly looking spike heel.
Deadly
. “I’ll call you back,” she said as she heard the apartment door open.

“In here,” Nikki heard herself call to Jessica.

“Nikki?” Jessica came rushing into the bedroom. She took one look at the shoe and set her handbag on the chair near the door. Her tone was distant. Aloof. She knew Nikki knew. “You need to put those back.”

“Tell me the truth.” Nikki wanted to cry, but she was too angry for tears. “The heels have been replaced, haven’t they? They were red leather that night. Now they’re red silk. We took them to the repair shop.”

Jessica walked slowly toward Nikki. “I didn’t know he was alive. I swear I didn’t. It wasn’t premeditated. I saw him at In & Out that night, after the party. I couldn’t believe it was him. It was him, all right.” She gave a little laugh. “I followed him.”

Nikki held Jessica’s gaze. “To Ramirez’s office.”

“To Ramirez’s office.” Jessica walked around her, going to her closet. “We argued. I was so hurt. So angry with him.” She pulled one of the boxes from the closet; it had the initials L-K-G. Inside was a velvet bag. “He told me he loved me.”

“Apparently, he told a lot of women that,” Nikki said gently.

Jessica didn’t seem to hear her. “We were supposed to go to Tahiti
together
. We’d been making plans. Then his plane went down.” Tears filled her eyes as she took the bag from the box. There was something heavy inside. “I couldn’t understand how he could have left me like that. How he could have let me think he was dead. He was full of platitudes, but he had no intention of taking me with him, not ever. He never loved me. I was so angry, I took my shoes off. Shoes he gave me when he told me he loved me. I was going to throw them at him.”

Nikki stared at the shoe in her hand.

“I hit him with one,” Jessica said. “The heel went right through his eye. Who would ever think something like that could happen? He fell over dead.” She slid her hand into the velvet bag. “I didn’t mean to kill him, but I wasn’t sorry he was dead.” There wasn’t a hint of emotion in her voice.

“But . . . but Pete vouched for what time you arrived home that night. He talked to the police for you. “

“People lie to the police, Nikki. For all sorts of reasons.” Jessica smiled. “Pete lied for me. I offered to sleep with him if he would vouch for me. He did.”

“And you did,” Nikki said, thinking back to Sunday, when she had run into Pete on the stairs. He’d looked like he’d already been to the gym. Jessica hadn’t answered the door right away because she’d been in the shower. They’d just had sex.

Nikki was so busy staring at the shoe, then Jessica, then the shoe again, that she didn’t see the pistol. At first. When she saw it in Jessica’s hand, she wasn’t even all that shocked. Nothing would shock her tonight. “Where did you get that?” she blurted. Stupid question, considering the circumstances.

“Lawrence Karl Gelpin. L-K-G,” she read off the box, seeming pleased with herself. “I like to keep all my belongings in order.”

“You’re going to shoot me, are you?” Nikki considered the red Jimmy Choo still in her hand as a weapon. What were the chances it would work twice in the same month?

“Afraid I have to,” Jessica said, almost apologetically.

“But . . . but we’re friends. I . . . I was trying to protect you.”

Jessica sighed. “If you’d given me another hour, I’d have been in the clear. This wouldn’t have had to happen. You should have gone to Movie Night. I was going to take care of Ramirez. Or have Mrs. Ramirez take care of him for me. And that would have been that. It would have been easy to pin it all on him, once he was dead.”

Nikki held on to the shoe for dear life. “You called Mrs. Ramirez.”

“Yup.”

“And now he’s dead. She killed him.”

“As I expected she would.” Another smile . . . “But then you made a mess of things.” She leveled the gun.

Nikki raised the red high heel. She was going to miss
The Sound of Music
. . . and maybe every Movie Night thereafter.

A sound in the living room startled them both.

“Hello!” a distinctly accented voice called.

Nikki heard a rolling squeak. “Back here, Mrs. McCauley!” she shouted. “In the bedroom.”

“I told you to bring me back that key. I suspected you were up to no good. Then I saw the giraffes going in after you and I knew it for sure.” She rolled into the bedroom with her walker, followed by the building’s superintendent. “Mr. Jordon let me in.” Spotting Jessica with the gun still held on Nikki, the old woman made a sound in her throat. “Good thing I did.”

Nikki lowered the shoe to her side. “You can’t kill us all, Jess,” she said. “You’re done. Mr. Jordon, could you call the police?”

Jessica flipped the safety on the gun, leaned down, and picked up the velvet bag it had come from. She carefully returned it to the bag, then the plastic box, and walked to the closet to place it on the correct shelf.

Nikki wanted to throw the shoe at Jessica, at the wall. At something, someone. But, of course, the police would need it for evidence. She tossed it on the bed and reached into her handbag to call her mother.

Jessica calmly tidied her closet while Mrs. McCauley watched, maybe keeping an eye out for the giraffes.

Nikki got Amondo. “I know Mother’s in the theater with her guests, but I need to speak with her,” she said, her voice cracking with emotion.

It took a couple of minutes, but finally Victoria came on the line. “Nicolette, where are you? What’s wrong? I’ll come at once.”

“I . . . I wanted to tell you I’d be late, is all,” Nikki said, fighting tears. She couldn’t believe she had so misjudged Jessica’s character, but she was glad she’d live to attend another Movie Night.

A
nd then . . .

It was Victoria who met Nikki at the door on Roxbury the next evening. Stanley and Oliver flew past her, through the foyer, headed straight for the kitchen and the heavenly smells coming from there.

“You’re late, Nicolette.” She was wearing a vintage white floor-length Chanel gown. Her hair was done up, her makeup perfect, down to her rose-colored lips. She looked as if she were on her way to the Oscars.

“I’m sorry. I had to go back to the police station. Detective Lutz had some more questions for me.” She stared at her mother, feeling completely underdressed in a gray flannel skirt, black sweater, and boots. “Are we going somewhere?”

“Certainly not. I’m dressed for dinner. I thought we’d eat on the terrace. It’s a beautiful evening.” Closing the door, she linked her arm through Nikki’s. “And I have a surprise for you for after dinner.”

“I hope it’s a bottle of wine. One for each of us.” Nikki sighed and rested her head on her mother’s shoulder. Nikki was so much taller than Victoria that she had to stoop, but she smelled heavenly.

For a couple of moments, there in Jessica’s apartment the previous night, she had thought her life was over. She didn’t know how she could have misjudged Jessica so completely, but she was thankful her mistake hadn’t been fatal. Live and learn.

“So you didn’t get arrested?” Victoria said.

Nikki raised her head. “No. Why would I be arrested? I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Arm in arm, they walked through the black-and-white tiled foyer. “Aiding and abetting a criminal? Interfering in a police investigation? Breaking and—well, not breaking, but certainly entering. And heaven knows what else you did, Nicolette!”

Nikki laughed. She could hear the dogs barking in the kitchen and Ina soothing them, with treats, no doubt.

“I’m serious,” Victoria insisted. “I hope you’ve learned your lesson. Criminal investigations should be left to the professionals.”

“Mother! You were in on it, too. You’re lucky Detective Lutz didn’t call
you
down to the police station today.”

Victoria lifted a brow as they walked through the living room to the French doors that opened onto the terrace. “If he had, I’d have been well dressed, wouldn’t I?”

Nikki stopped where she was, looking out over the stone terrace. “Wow, you did this all for dinner for just the two of us?”

A small round table had been elegantly set with her mother’s favorite Waterford crystal and china. Around the table, a hundred candles sparkled in the darkness. More floated in the pool.

“It’s beautiful,” Nikki murmured, truly touched.

“Well, it’s not every day that my daughter comes close to death and lives to see the killer thrown in the pokey.”

Nikki turned to her mother, laughing. “The pokey? No one has called it ‘the pokey’ in forty years.”

“Sit down, Nicolette, before the lobster bisque gets cold.” Victoria glided to one of the chairs at the table and Nikki took the other. “There’s the bisque, then a buttercrisp salad, then a filet mignon with roasted carrots, and bananas Foster for dessert. You always did like the flaming desserts.”

Nikki picked up a linen napkin and laid it in her lap. “And there
is
wine,” she said as Amondo approached the table, dressed in a black dinner jacket, carrying a bottle of wine. “So, what’s the surprise?”

“Well, I know how upset you were about missing Movie Night last night, so . . .” Victoria sat back in her chair, obviously pleased with herself. “Amondo has agreed to run the movie again tonight. A private showing just for the two of us!”

“Let me guess.” Nikki held her glass up to Amondo, not knowing if she wanted to laugh or cry. “
The Sound of Music?
”

KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th St.
New York, NY 10018

Copyright © 2011 by Cheryl Crane

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

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Library of Congress Card Catalogue Number: 2011927360

ISBN: 978-0-7582-7398-7

Table of Contents

Title Page