The PMS Murder (14 page)

“Striking, isn’t it?” he asked.

Yeah. Like a migraine.

“Say hi to Max.”

He walked over to one of the potted palms, where I saw a bright yellow parrot perched in the branches. Colin held out his finger, and Max jumped on board.

“Max, honey,” Colin cooed to the bird, “say hi to Jaine. Say
Hi, Jaine.
” The parrot looked at me with weary eyes and pooped onto the zebra skin rug.

“Dammit, Max. How many times have I told you? Poop in your cage, not on the rug.” He put the bird inside an ornate wrought-iron birdcage, the bottom of which was lined with old publicity stills of Marybeth.

“Go ahead. Make doo-doo on the nice lady,” he instructed the bird.

“I know it’s awful,” he said, turning to me, “having Max defecate on the dead. I’m disgraceful, aren’t I?”

And then he shot me a smile that undoubtedly melted many a heart in West Hollywood.

“So, Jaine,” he said. “How can I help you?”

“Mind if I ask you some questions?”

“Not at all. Have a seat.”

He gestured to a hot pink velvet sofa that looked like it had spent its formative years in a New Orleans bordello.

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Laura Levine

“I’d offer you something to eat, but all I’ve got is some take-out soy sauce. I’m not much of a cook.

But I make a mean cup of French-roast coffee.

Want some?”

I’d just had three cups at Rochelle’s, plus one at Junior’s, and a cup of instant at home. If I had any more coffee I’d be bouncing off the potted palms.

On the other hand, if he left the room, I’d have a chance to snoop around.

“Sure,” I said, “coffee sounds great.”

“I won’t be long,” he said, as he headed off to the kitchen.

“Take your time,” I called out after him.

The minute he was gone I made a beeline for an old rolltop desk in the corner. The desk was littered with unpaid bills and sketches of wildly colored rooms. I could see why Marybeth had been reluctant to make Colin a partner. I didn’t think there were many clients (outside of a Hollywood Boulevard massage parlor) who wanted their rooms done up in black leather and red lace.

I quickly rifled through the drawers but found little of interest. Until I discovered a tiny drawer under the lip of the rolltop desk. A secret compartment if ever I saw one. I pulled it open, and as I did, a piercing alarm filled the room.

Damn. The drawer was wired! I looked down and saw nothing in it but some fabric swatches.

Why the hell would Colin have an alarm on his swatches?

Colin came ambling out from the kitchen with two mugs of steaming coffee, not the least bit per-turbed at the racket.

“Oh, Max,” he said. “Shut up.” And then I realized it wasn’t an alarm making all that noise; it was the bird.

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“Sorry about that,” Colin said. “Max has learned how to imitate the sound of the car alarms in the neighborhood. It drives me nuts.”

“I was just admiring your designs,” I said, nudg-ing his drawer shut with my hip. “They’re great.”

“I know. Can you believe Marybeth wanted to hire that guy from New York over me?” He joined me at the desk and handed me my coffee.

“I like this one a lot,” he said, pointing to one of the designs.

“Yes,” I gushed. “What a great kitchen.”

“It’s not a kitchen,” he said, frowning. “It’s a bathroom.”

“Oh? Isn’t that a microwave?”

“No, it’s a medicine cabinet.” Oops. This wasn’t going nearly as smoothly as I’d hoped.

“Well,” I said, “if you don’t mind answering some questions . . .”

I skittered back to the sofa and took a seat.

He sat down opposite me on a zebra-skin ottoman.

“Go right ahead. Ask away.”

“Actually, Rochelle thinks the cops have her pegged as Marybeth’s killer.”

“Can’t say I blame them. She was crazy that night.”

“Just for the record, though, did you see anyone go into the kitchen who could’ve tampered with the guacamole?”

“Nope,” he said. “Just Rochelle. But I wasn’t paying much attention. I suppose somebody else could’ve slipped in.”

“Do you know any of the club members who might have had a grudge against Marybeth?” 138

Laura Levine

He shook his head.

“Nobody really liked her, but nobody hated her enough to kill her.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” I said.

“Why? What do you mean?”

This wasn’t going to be easy, but I took a deep breath and plowed ahead.

“Look, Colin. I heard you on the phone the night Marybeth announced she was bringing in that guy from New York. If I remember correctly, you said
I’d like to kill that bitch
. The exact same thing you said to Pam and me the night of the murder.”

Colin rolled his eyes.

“For crying out loud, if I had a dollar for every time I said I wanted to kill Marybeth, I could retire tomorrow. You’re a writer. Haven’t you ever heard of the expression ‘figure of speech’?” He got up and began pacing on his zebra skin rug.

“I admit I was furious when she announced she’d hired that guy from New York. For years, she’d been promising me that she’d make me a partner, while I slaved like a dog, picking up her dry cleaning and her frappuccinos. And then she turned around and screwed me. So, yes, I was pissed. But I didn’t kill her.” And I have to admit that, standing there in his
Desperate Housewives
T-shirt, Colin sure didn’t look much like a killer.

“You’re talking to a man who once liberated the lobsters from a lobster tank in a Chinese restaurant. I’m just not the murdering kind.” Just as I was trying to picture Colin unleashing lobsters in a Chinese restaurant, his cell phone rang.

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“Yes?” he said, snapping it on. “Yes, this is Colin Lambert. . . . She did? Really?” His eyes lit up. “This afternoon? Why, yes. Yes, of course, I can be there.”

He hung up and whooped with joy. “Omigod.

That was Marybeth’s attorney. That dear woman has named me in her will! I’m going to the reading of the will this afternoon!

“Max, baby,” he crooned to the parrot, “pack your birdseed, you’re gonna be movin’ on up to that de-luxe birdcage in the sky!” He plopped down next to me on the sofa and hugged a throw pillow to his chest. “Maybe all those years of schlepping frappuccinos weren’t a total loss.”

Then he saw the look on my face and stopped cold.

“Damn,” he said, clearly reading my mind. “I guess this means I had a motive to kill her, huh?” I nodded.

“But I had no idea she was leaving me anything.

Honest. This was a woman who used to give me drugstore candy for Christmas. Who would’ve dreamed she’d remember me in her will?” He looked at me imploringly. “I swear, I didn’t know.”

And I believed him. He’d seemed genuinely surprised at that phone call from Marybeth’s lawyer.

I thanked him for his time and got up to go, beginning to think he might be innocent after all.

But as I was heading to the door, I happened to look up at his bookshelf and saw something that put him right back on my suspect list. There, sitting squashed between an
Architectural Digest
and a Christopher Lowell decorating book, was a cookbook. And not just any cookbook.

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Laura Levine

The title of this slim volume was
Cooking with
Peanuts.

I figured I’d stop by Doris’s place next, to question the PMS Club’s senior member. But when I got into my Corolla and checked my answering machine, I found an urgent message from Nick Angelides, the president of Toiletmasters, asking me to write him a funny speech to give at the L.A.

Plumbers Association that night.

As much as I wanted to continue my investigation, I had an impressive collection of bills to pay.

So I went home and spent the rest of the afternoon writing toilet humor for Nick. (
And so, my
friends, I’d like to conclude my speech with this thought:
People who live in glass houses should use their neighbor’s bathroom.
)

After faxing Nick the speech, and my bill, I ran out to McDonald’s for a quick dinner of a Quarter Pounder with fries, which I ate parked at the curb in front of my duplex. I still felt funny about eating high-calorie food in front of Prozac, what with her being on such a strict diet.

I slurped down the last of my Coke and popped a Listerine Cool Mint breath strip in my mouth so Prozac wouldn’t smell the burger on my breath.

“Hi, honey. I’m home,” I said, as I walked in the door.

I picked her up from where she was stretched out on the sofa on one of my cashmere sweaters.

She didn’t seem to have lost any weight yet. But she’d only been on her diet a few days. I’d be noticing the difference soon enough.

“How’s my little angel?”

She sniffed suspiciously.

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Is that a Quarter Pounder I smell underneath the
Cool Mint breath strip?

I swear, this cat was a CIA operative in a former life.

“Okay,” I admitted. “I had a Quarter Pounder.

But that’s it. No fries. Honest.” She shot me a piercing look.

“Okay, so I had fries. I’m ashamed of myself. I have absolutely no will power whatsoever.”
Scratch my back for the next three hours, and I may
forgive you.

I spent the rest of the night watching TV in bed, Prozac draped over my tummy as I scratched her back. Finally, I called it a day and turned out the light. But sleep didn’t come easy. My mind kept drifting back to Colin, wondering what a guy who didn’t cook was doing with a peanut cookbook.

Planning a recipe for murder, perhaps?

Chapter 15

Prozac continued to amaze me. The next morning she polished off her plate of Fit ’N Trim Tuna Tidbits with nary a whimper. Any day now, I expected to wake up and find her doing aerobics.

“I’m so proud of you, pumpkin face,” I said, kneeling down and scratching her behind her ears.

Please. Don’t call me “pumpkin face.” “Prozac” is bad
enough.

She shot me a blast of tuna breath, then scooted off to her perch on the living room sofa.

I went to the refrigerator to see what I could rus-tle up for my breakfast, hoping against hope to find something edible. But all I saw was the same moldy Swiss cheese and martini olives that were there the last time I looked. I’d have to run out and get something.

I was just heading to the bedroom to get dressed when there was a knock on my front door.

It was Lance.

“I come bearing breakfast,” he said, holding up a care package from Junior’s deli. “Coffee and corn muffins. Slathered with butter.” THE PMS MURDERS

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Prozac, who’d been snoozing on the sofa, sat up with interest. Food has that effect on her.

She jumped down off the sofa and came trotting over, her nose twitching inquisitively.

Do I smell bacon?

“It’s only corn muffins,” I said. “You don’t like corn muffins.”

She didn’t look convinced.

Maybe I do, and maybe I don’t.

“Say, Lance, would you mind if we ate our breakfast in the bathroom?”

“Huh?”

“I know it sounds silly, but now that Prozac’s on her diet, I feel guilty eating anything more than five calories in front of her. She has this way of staring at me like those big-eyed kids in the Save the Children commercials.”

“You’re crazy. You know that, don’t you?”

“Just humor me, okay?”

With an exasperated sigh, he followed me into the bathroom, where we ate our muffins perched on the edge of my tub.

“See?” I said. “Eating here’s not so bad.”

“Yeah, it’s real handy if you need to floss.”

“Aren’t you proud of me?” I smeared my corn muffin with a glob of strawberry jam. “Prozac’s actually been eating her diet food. And you didn’t think I could tough it out.”

“If you’re so tough, why are we eating on a bathtub?”

“A mere technicality. The fact is, in the battle of wills, I finally scored a victory over Prozac.”

“Well, congratulations,” Lance conceded, clunk-ing my coffee container in a toast. “Here’s to Jaine, the Conqueror. Although I must say, Prozac doesn’t look any thinner.”

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Laura Levine

“That’s because she just started eating healthy. I’m sure we’ll be able to see the difference any day now.” Lance took a sip of his coffee and got down to the real reason for his visit.

“So. Did you mention me to Colin?”

“Trust me. You don’t want to meet him. He’s got lime green walls, a parrot who thinks he’s a car alarm, and possible homicidal tendencies.”

“He also happens to have cheekbones to die for.

I’ll take my chances. Just set me up with him, all right?”

“I don’t know, Lance. I feel funny about it.” He grabbed the bag of muffins.

“Fix me up, or you don’t get any more muffins.”

“For crying out loud, if you think I’d sacrifice your safety for a lousy corn muffin—”

“Slathered with butter and strawberry jam,” he reminded me.

“Okay, okay,” I said, snatching the bag from him.

“I’ll do it.”

One and a half muffins later (okay, two muffins), I was walking Lance to the door when the phone rang.

It was, of all people, Colin.

“I went to the reading of Marybeth’s will yesterday,” he said. “Meet me for lunch and I’ll tell you all about it.”

I could hear Max in the background, doing his ear-splitting rendition of a car alarm.

“How about the Earth Café?” I suggested. “One o’clock?”

“Great. See you then.”

“Was that Colin?” Lance asked when I hung up.

“How did you know?”

“I heard a parrot impersonating a car alarm in the background.”

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I wasn’t surprised he’d heard Max. The man can hear hair dryers blowing in Pomona.

“Yes, that was Colin.”

“So you’ll tell him about me?” I reluctantly agreed to play cupid, and Lance left to get ready for work.

I still couldn’t believe he wanted to meet Colin.

Lance is a guy who’ll pore over 37 articles in
Consumer Reports
before buying a toaster, and here he was ready to leap headlong into a relationship with a potential murderer without a second thought.