I motion to Marissa, who pulls them out of her jeans and hands them to her, saying, “These jewels.”
Opal doesn't take them, and even though she knows the jig is up, she tries, “Whose are those?”
I shrug and say, “Well, Cosmo thought they were his, but we set him straight.”
Her pancake pose finally cracks. “Who are you? Shouldn't you be giving me the right to remain silent and all of that?”
Hali says, “They're kids, Opal, not cops.”
Opal squints at us and sits back down. “Well, they're sure acting like cops. Who are they?”
Hali shrugs. “Just a couple of kids with a vested interest.” She waits for Opal to respond, and when she doesn't, Hali says, “So…?”
“So I pawned the jewels. So what! Max wouldn't rip up my contract, and I'm sorry, but the man should not get fifty percent of any job I land in the next eight years. It's just not right! If he's not going to play fair, he's going to have to pay somehow, and the only thing I could find were those stupid jewels.” She frowns at Hali and says, “Which, by the way, weren't worth it. First I thought Max noticed that I'd snagged them, then when I survived that, LeBrandi caught me stashing them and blackmailed a piece out of me. And after all that, all I got was enough to pay two months' rent in this place.”
“Wait a minute,” I say. “Max takes fifty percent?”
She gives me a lopsided scowl. “That's right. He makes you and he takes you.”
“Everybody signs over fifty percent?”
“That's right, babe.”
“Even after you leave?”
“Half of anything you do while you're there and up to eight years after you leave is his, and babe, it's iron-clad. He's had lawsuits with some high rollers, and every time he's come out on top.” She shakes her head. “His setup's a shiny little lure, and we all take it, hook, line, and sinker.”
Hali says, “So you were looking for your contract and you found the jewels?”
“That's right. He was busy firing me when some big honcho dropped in, and while he was schmoozing with him in the reception room, I was ripping through his desk, thinking that if I could just find my contract, I'd be free from that overbearing jerk once and for all. But all I found was that stupid jewelry.” She rakes back some loose strands of hair. “So what now? You got handcuffs in your back pocket or something?”
“Very funny,” I said. “So when's the last time you saw LeBrandi?”
It's like she'd forgotten LeBrandi was dead. “Man, that's a bummer about LeBrandi. The last time I saw her? The day I left. We had a fight about the brooch, I told her where she could shove it, and that was that. I think the woman's a backbiting leech and a liar, but I didn't hate her enough to kill her.” She rolls her eyes and chuckles. “Now, if Max turns up dead, look me up.”
Hali says, “Mama saw LeBrandi come in after curfew last night. Any ideas?”
“She was always sneaking around after curfew, Hali. And if Max wasn't so uptight about boyfriends, he'd have fewer fillies jumpin' the fence.”
I thought about this a minute, then said, “Did she have a boyfriend, or was she, you know, dating different people?”
She laughed, “Oh, she was steady… like the San Andreas Fault.” Then she added, “Look, LeBrandi'd keep me up all night jawin' about some new guy; then she'd drop him two days later. Beats me who her latest was. If you ask me, Max had way more grounds to can LeBrandi than he had to can me. What I want to know is, how'd you wind up at Cosmo's?”
So I tell her about the paper in the sock, and when I'm done, she shakes her head and says, “See? She ripped that off from me, too! I do all the research, and she just goes and snakes it out of my desk. Like she couldn't find her own contact?” She snickers and says, “That sums up LeBrandi right there. She's a snake.” She hesitates. “Uh… was a snake.”
Nobody said anything for a minute; then Hali looked at me like, Well? and really, as much as I'd wanted to believe that Opal had killed her roommate, I could tell she hadn't. My theory was dust, and that took me right back to a place I didn't want to go.
I shrugged and said, “I guess that's it.”
“So what now?” Opal asked. “You gonna hand those back over to Max?”
“Well, they are his….”
“Yeah,” she grumbles. “And so's my life.” She took a gulp of cold coffee, her face pinching up as she swallowed. “Get out of here, would you? I don't need the reminder.”
So we said good-bye and filed back down the steps to the landing below. The man we'd met in the alley passed us along the stairs on his way up, carrying a shredded sponge mop and a pail. As he moved past me, he didn't look at me—he looked right through me.
And as we let ourselves out the basement door and climbed up the steps to the alley, I couldn't help wondering again if those eyes of his were blind.
Or if that's just what happens to eyes that have seen too much.
The back of the Bug was fine with me. And while Hali hopped curbs and violated traffic, I sat curled up, looking out the window at nothing. If it wasn't Opal, then who? I hated sliding back into dark thoughts about my mother, but I couldn't help it. She'd changed so much. And maybe Lana Keyes, Big Daddy waitress, was too grossed out by the potential of goopy guts to hurt a fly, but Dominique Windsor, actress at large, seemed ruthless. Determined.
Unstoppable.
Besides, there were no goopy guts involved here. It was a tidy, spotless little murder.
And I was seriously slipping into the darkness of Dominique's Dungeon again when Marissa says from the front seat, “Oh, please.”
I turn from the window and blink at her. “What?”
“She did not do it, Sammy. You've got to get that out of your head!”
I didn't argue with her. I just looked down.
“It–was–some–one–else,” she says, like she's counting to a preschooler.
“But who?” I whisper. “And why?”
“That's why we have police, Sammy. Paid professionals who know how to figure these things out.”
“But—”
“But nothing! There are what—fifteen? sixteen?—a lot of people living in that house. And you've eliminated one as a suspect. What about the rest of them? You don't know anything about them. Any one of them could have had a reason to kill LeBrandi, and hel-lo… you're not going to be able to figure it out! Just let the police handle it, would you?”
“Okay, okay!”
She faced forward for all of three seconds, then whipped back around and said, “Stop it! You're killing yourself over nothing. She did not do it!”
I tried to hide from Marissa by looking back out the window. I couldn't just drop the thoughts twisting and tangling in my head. It's like my brain was a giant knot, and no matter where I tugged on it, the knot wouldn't budge. It just got tighter.
And I couldn't figure out what was worse, having a murderer for a mother or suspecting my mother of murder.
So while Hali tooled around town, pointing out tourist traps and movie star hangouts for Marissa, I looked out the window at nothing, pushing and pulling on this gigantic knot in my head.
And even after Hali had picked up some groceries and the dry cleaning, even after she and Marissa went into Java Joint so Hali could finally get her latte, there I was, scrunched in the back of this beat-up Bug, brooding and moody, picking at that knot.
Finally I started getting antsy. Hali and Marissa had been inside Java Joint for a long time, and I was feeling suffocated by the smell of green onions and cilantro steaming up out of the grocery sack, and by the sterile plastic dry-cleaning bags lying across my lap.
And all of a sudden I wanted to bust out of there and run home. I wanted to get away from Hollywood. Away from my mother.
Away from the giant knot strangling my brain.
I missed Grams. I missed Hudson. I was so homesick I even missed Officer Borsch.
And thinking of Officer Borsch made me flash back to his secret twin Tweedledee and ho
w seeing him appear at Max's mansion had spooked me. And in the middle of that flashback, it hit me how it was the second time that day that I'd been spooked by people who could have passed as twins.
And thinking about the first time — about seeing LeBrandi, dead in my mother's bed — suddenly made a spot in that knot in my brain give way. It didn't just slip, it snapped. And like a tiny hole snagged in a skintight stocking, all of a sudden it ran, unraveling into a gash as broad and fast as the Sunset Strip.
At first I couldn't move. Then I couldn't not move. I wrestled myself out of the back of the Bug, my heart pounding so hard I was shaking.
I had to find Hali and Marissa and get back to Max's house. Now.
It was a matter of life and death.
FOURTEEN
Getting Marissa to the car was like dragging a bloodhound from the chase. She'd seen a star. And even though it wasn't anyone I'd ever heard of, Hali sat at the counter drinking her latte and confirmed it was true.
Neither of them seemed to believe that getting back to the mansion was a matter of life and death. Hali just shook latte foam into her mouth while Marissa talked right over me, saying, “Do you think I should ask him? Do you think it would be rude?”
Hali says, “Oh, go on. He's about done.”
Marissa grabs a Java Joint napkin and asks Hali, “Do you have a pen?”
Hali digs one out of her purse and nods across the room with her nose. “Better hop to it. He's beatin' a path.”
So there I am, trying to talk about life and death while my best friend deserts me for a tube twinkler's autograph and Hali laps up coffee foam from the depths of a cardboard cup.
“Hali,” I beg her, “we've got to go back. Now.”
She checks the inside of her cup and shakes it out one last time. “I hear you, I hear you.” She dumps the cup in the trash and says, “So let's go.”
Marissa joins us back at the Bug, looking all disgruntled. She plops down in the front seat and says, “He doesn't sign napkins.”
Hali fires up the Bug with a grin. “Give him a couple of years. He'll be falling all over himself to sign your trash.”
I sat in the backseat, quiet. And hurt. I mean, I knew that I'd dragged them all around town on a wild-peacock chase, but still, they didn't have to ignore me like that. But sitting there in the back of Hali's Bug, scrunched in on all sides, I couldn't really blame them for not listening. At least not Marissa. I mean, it was true—I'd been a maniac. All day. A raving, panicked maniac.
Sure I'd been upset, dealing with my mother and the thought of her snagging me a dinosaur dad. And having all that on my mind, well, it's no wonder I'd just been sucked in. But still, if I'd had the brains to stop and take a deep breath early in the day, I'd have thought of it right off, and I wouldn't have had to take the Tinsel Town Taxi to Cosmo's or the Peppermint Peacock. I'd have stayed right at Max's.
Right next to my mother.
All that caffeine Hali'd had seemed to be having the reverse effect on her. Here I wanted to be moving, and what was she doing?
Coming to a complete stop at a red light.
And what I couldn't figure out was why. Why now? I mean, there were at least three different illegal maneuvers she could be making to get through the light—and then one sort of iffy one that involved the ramp of a delivery truck—but she was just sitting there.
Finally she looks at me in the rearview mirror and says, “Quit squirming, I'll get you there.”
“Hali, you don't understand….”
“Yeah, yeah, I know—life and death.”
The light changed, and she went back to driving, but my eyes were stuck on the rearview mirror, seeing a mirage of her eyes. And all of a sudden I start having the worst panic attack of my life. I can't breathe right, I can't seem to see right, and in no time my hands are shaking and it feels like I'm covered with wool. Itchy, sweaty, scratchy wool.
Hali eases into a gas station and says, “It'll only be a minute” as she swings her door shut.
The second she's outside, I shoot forward in my seat and whisper, “Marissa! Marissa, you've got to listen to me!”
“What, Sammy? You are acting so weird! I gotta tell you, it's kind of embarrassing.”
“Marissa, just listen. Please, just listen!”
She turns to face me. “Okay, okay! What?”
“I was wrong. I was all wrong about Opal.”
“Yeah. Didn't you decide that a couple of hours ago?”
“Please, Marissa!”
“Okay. I'm sorry. Go on.”
“And I was a moron for not thinking of this sooner, but you know, there were sleeping pills and everyone thought LeBrandi had OD'd, so I got off on the wrong track and—”
“Would you please just tell me what you're all panicked about, Sammy?”
I take a deep breath and say, “Opal didn't kill LeBrandi.”
“Right….”
“Nobody killed LeBrandi.”
“What?”
I lean in closer and whisper, “At least they didn't mean to.”
“Now you think it was an accident?”
“No! What I think is that whoever killed LeBrandi meant to kill someone else. Someone who looks enough like LeBrandi to be mistaken for her—especially in the dark. Someone who should've been sleeping in that bed last night.”
Gradually Marissa's jaw drops down and her eyes bug out. She whispers, “Your mother?”
“Exactly.”
Now Marissa tries to take a mental step back from what I'm saying, but it's not an easy thing to do. It makes too much sense. Finally she says, “But… but why?”
“Exactly. Why would someone want my mother out of the way? Well, LeBrandi would—for the same reasons my mother would've wanted LeBrandi out of the way—but obviously it wasn't her.” I lower my voice even farther. “Then there are all the people who don't want my mother to marry Max.”
It took no time for Marissa to make the connection. She puts a hand in front of her mouth and whispers, “Oh… my… god! You think it's Hali?”
We both sneak a peek at Hali, who's screwing the gas cap back on. “Maybe, but more likely Reena or Inga.”
“Inga? How do you figure that?”
“Well, look. If Max is worth a bundle—which obviously he is—and if he never told Inga that Hali is his daughter—which, from their conversation this morning, I'd say he didn't—then Inga has probably been expecting to inherit his fortune. Enter my mother, whom Max has decided to start a family with, and poof ! that pretty little purse of his is snatched right out of Inga's hands.”
Marissa keeps an eye on Hali as she walks over to the station's building, and whispers, “Wow!”
“But what all this means is that whoever thought they were killing my mother last night didn't get the job done. My mother is still a problem.”
“Are you saying you think they're going to try it again? Sammy, there are cops all over the place trying to figure out who killed LeBrandi. Who'd be crazy enough to try it again?”
“Maybe they won't. I don't know. I just can't take the chance. We've got to get back and talk to my mother and maybe Max.”
“Max? Why him? What about the police?”
“If I tell the police, then I have to break my promise to Hali—otherwise what I'm telling them won't make sense.”
“But what if it was Hali who tried to kill your mother?”
“What if it's not? I mean, you were right—that house is full of people we don't know anything about—and if it's not Hali and I break my pact with her, then…”
Hali pushes through the gas station door with a quart of oil in her hand. Marissa watches her approach the Bug and nods. “Then she can break her pact with you.”
I rested my head against the seat back. “I was crazy to tell her. Cra-zy!”
Hali calls through the window, “You two okay? I think I'm low a quart—it'll only be a minute.”
She pops the hood behind us, and I whisper to Marissa, “I need to find out i
f Inga knew.”
“That Max proposed?”
“Yeah. 'Cause if she didn't, then my prime suspects would have to be either Hali or her mother.”
“Or…,” Marissa whispers, “both.”
Hali slams the hood and dumps the empty oil jug in the trash. I lean back a little and say, “I don't know about that…. They're not even talking to each other!”
Marissa sits forward as Hali comes around to the driver's door. “Yeah, well, maybe that's why!”
Hali plops into her seat, whips her seat belt on, and says, “Okay, now we're ready to jam.” She fires up the Bug, lets the thing idle a minute, then throws it into gear and lays rubber getting out of the parking lot. “Did you hear it pinging before? God, this thing just eats oil, but hey, it beats shelling out my savings on a new one.” She looks at me in the rearview mirror. “You okay back there?”
I nod and try to change the subject. “Don't you think Max would, you know, buy you a new car?”
“You mean blackmail one out of him?” She laughs and says, “You've got a super-sized naughty streak on you, girl.”
“No, I didn't mean blackmail! I meant just ask.”
She didn't say anything else. Didn't mention life and death or what a freak I'd been at Java Joint. All she did was shake her head and chuckle. The whole way home. And then, when we pulled into the driveway and parked inside the cottage garage, she grins at us and says, “Thanks, girls. I've got myself a whole new perspective on my situation.”
I buried the picture of Claire and the head shots inside a grocery sack, and we helped Hali carry in the dry cleaning and food. And as we let down the garage door, she started humming.
Humming.
And she kept right on humming as she punched the code into the kitchen's back-door panel, thumped a bag of groceries on a counter, and went over to the laundry room door. I had a grocery sack, too, so I put it next to hers on the counter, but I guess I was taking too long, because she says, “C'mon, Burdock. The dry cleaning goes in here.”
I catch up to Hali and Marissa, saying, “Quit with the Burdock, would you?”
Hali grins. “Aw, it's cute. Suits you.”
I grumble, “Thanks a lot.”