So I pick up LeBrandi's wrist and press against the inside with my fingertips, looking for a pulse.
Touching her is giving me the creeps. Her skin isn't like ice or anything, but it's cool and pale, and her fingers are arched straight up at me.
I put her hand back by her side and whisper, “Nothing.”
Just then a woman in purple-and-green plaid pajamas and purple cottontail slippers comes barging in. She gasps, and the rag-wrapped pigtails on top of her head seem to flex toward the ceiling as she says, “Oh my god—it's true?”
We just look at her.
“She's dead?”
“I…I think so.”
“I overheard Dominique on the phone …and… and… oh-me-oh-my, oh-me-oh-my!” she whimpers, hopping around like the Plaid Rabbit, late to tea. Then her nose twitches up and down really fast and she cries, “This is terrible, just terrible!” and barges right back out the door.
Thirty seconds later she's back with two other women, and in no time more show up. And pretty soon we're having a pajama party of brightly colored women playing Pass-the-Vial and wailing Why-oh-why-LeBrandi.
Then suddenly the Plaid Rabbit gasps and slams the vial back onto the dresser, and when everyone else looks where she's looking, they all go wide-eyed and silent, shrinking back against the walls. And let me tell you, Marissa and I shrink back, too, because coming straight at us is a mummy.
A real live mummy.
That's what she looks like to us, anyway. She's got white gauze wrapped around her hands, around her head and most of her face, and she's wearing a white robe, crossed tight at the neck. She shuffles toward us in heavy woolen socks, and the minute her eyes land on me, I scramble to the side too.
See, she's got eyes like a tiger, yellow and fierce. And I'm not talking yellow like our cab driver's had been—no, her irises are yellow. And as I'm hugging the wall, Tiger Eyes takes one look at LeBrandi, then turns on Marissa and me. “Who are you.”
It's a command, not a question, but still, it needs an answer—one I tried hard not to choke on. “We're Domi… Dominique's nieces.”
“This is not a hotel.”
“We … we came to…to surprise her, and… and um… well, we're leaving this morning. We didn't know.”
“Hrrmm.” She turns back to LeBrandi, then sees the vial on the dresser. She picks it up and shakes it at the other women. “This should be a lesson to you, girls! You see where this can lead?”
Just then my mother appears, her shoulders cradled in the arm of a man with a white moustache wearing a shiny gold robe and black slippers.
Right away I know that this man is Maximilian Mueller. There's just an air about him. His hair's damp and styled back, and the part down the side is as sharp as the edge of his moustache. His face is tan, and shiny from shaving, and his hazel green eyes look magnified to about three times normal size by the lenses of his boxy tortoiseshell glasses.
Soap and aftershave fill the air like incense as he pats my mother's shoulder and says, “Take a deep breath, Dominique. Inga and I will handle this.”
As Max walks in, the Pajama Platoon seems to let out a gigantic sigh of relief. And when they see their friend Dominique crying, they all start bawling. The Plaid Rabbit grabs my mother by the arm and says, “Why, why?” and another lady with plum red hair sobs, “She was so beautiful!”
The Mummy frowns. “Shoo! All of you, shoo! Go on to your rooms and get yourselves ready for breakfast,” she says, then adds, “Except you and your nieces, Dominique. You should explain to Max and me why LeBrandi is in your bed. Has it to do with unexpected company?”
Dying must rank higher than bleeding or passing gas in my mother's book of social no-nos, because she didn't even nod. She just stared at LeBrandi with a horrified expression on her face, getting paler and paler by the second.
The Mummy points to the writing-desk chair. “Maxi, let her sit down.”
He swings the chair around, and my mother sort of dissolves onto it. Then the Mummy says softly, “Perhaps if you didn't look at her…?”
My mother blinks, then tears her eyes away from LeBrandi and stares at her feet instead.
And then, does the Mummy let my mother recover a little and suggest maybe taking this discussion elsewhere? No. She sits right down on the edge of the bed and says, “Now then, tell us what happened.”
So my mother does. And even though she tells everything pretty much like it happened, the whole situation is giving me the creeps. A mummy on the bed with her back to the dead, my mother brushing away tears as she speaks, Mr. Max looking oh-so-sympathetic and never taking his eyes off my mother—it's like we're in the middle of some weird soap opera instead of a room with a real live dead body.
Now, maybe Max and Inga are hanging on my mother's every word, but I'm not. I'm more checking out Max, worrying about my mother actually marrying this guy. I mean, maybe he's really rich, but what kind of man wears a gold lamé robe and turtle-shell glasses?
Not anyone you'd want to call Dad.
'Course then again, there was Lady Lana, with fuzzy blond hair and pencil-sharp eyebrows—someone I had been known to call Mom.
When my mother gets to the part about the vial of pills, Max leans over and takes the bottle off the dresser, and as he does, a long gold chain with a key dangling from it swings forward from the flaps of his robe. He tucks it back away, then murmurs, “Why didn't I see it? It should never have been like this!”
Inga says, “Maxi, don't do this to yourself! Who was to know she was so troubled?”
Just then Hali comes into the room, and if it weren't for those beaded braids, I might not have recognized her. Instead of a UCLA T-shirt, she's wearing a simple black dress with a white apron over it, and her toe rings are tucked safely inside black nurse shoes. Her face also seems stiff, almost blank, and she doesn't look at us at all. Or LeBrandi. Instead she looks straight at Max and says, “There's an ambulance here. Mama's bringing them up.”
Max nods, then says, “Help Dominique and the girls down to the reception room, would you? And bring them some coffee and juice. Inga and I will be down shortly.”
Hali gives everyone in the room sort of a roving sneer—well, except LeBrandi; she doesn't even look at her. Then she flags us along with a wag of the head and leaves the room.
I grab my backpack and Marissa wrestles with her suitcase, and just as we make it out the door, here comes Reena in a getup just like Hali's, hurrying alongside two guys in orange jumpsuits. They rush past us, and while Marissa and I are kind of rooted to the floor, Hali says, “Dominique, have them park that suitcase next door, okay? They look ridiculous hauling that thing around.”
“What's that?” She looks at us like she'd forgotten we were there. “Oh, yes, yes, of course.”
So we throw Marissa's suitcase and my backpack on the bed where we'd slept, then come back out to see Hali and Reena off to the side, whispering fiercely to each other while my mother's hovering near her own doorway, eavesdropping.
She sees us and comes away, saying, “They radioed in a ‘code blue’—do you know what that is?”
I shrug. “Blue body?” I turn to Marissa. “You think?”
Reena takes off down the hall, then Hali says to us, “Let's go, lambchops.”
She leads us down the stairs, past the marble fountain, into Little Egypt, then marches through the foyer without a word. And it's starting to feel like she's going to march us straight outside when suddenly she pivots to a halt by a tall black door that's got four-foot stone urns on either side of it. She pushes the door open, steps aside, and puts an arm out, saying, “Wait in here. I'll be back with coffee.”
My mother slumps into a black leather chair by a window, and when I try to say something to her, she snaps, “Shh! Let me think, would you?” So Marissa and I sort of stand around awhile, then start checking out what looks like the Mueller Agency Hall of Fame. Framed photographs and magazine covers tile the walls from end to end, clear up to the ceiling, and even I h
ave to admit that some of these people chumming up to Max in the photographs are famous. Real famous. Marissa says to my mother, “Max is the agent for all these people?”
She blinks at her a few times, then says, “What was that? Oh. Oh, yes.” Then she adds, “Or was.” She gets up and starts pacing around the room, muttering, “Why does he want us here? What is taking so long?” She turns to me. “Don't slip up, Samantha. Say as little as you can get away with. You too, Marissa.” She slumps back into the chair. “Oh god, what a nightmare!”
Now, it seemed to me that my mother was more concerned about us giving her away than she was about her friend having died. And I was trying not to be too upset with her about it, especially since—as much as I tried to tell myself it wasn't my fault—I was pretty upset with myself. I mean, I had heard thumping. Loud thumping. And sleeping people do not thump. They snore, or drool, or make little whistling noises, but they don't thump. Not like that, anyway.
So what was all that thumping for? Had LeBrandi been calling for help? It hadn't even resembled an SOS, but maybe she was too out of it to do anything more. Maybe if I'd gone next door…
I sat beside my mother and whispered, “Do you think that bumping I heard last night was her calling for help?”
“Oh, Samantha. Are you sure you didn't just imagine it?”
“I did not imagine it! What if she was trying to call for help? What if—”
“Oh, please. Don't do this. How were we supposed to know?” She hesitates, then says, “It would probably be a good idea not to bring it up at all. It'll … it'll only complicate matters.” Then she gets up and starts pacing again.
I had so many questions logjamming in my brain that I probably would've started pacing the opposite side of the room if Marissa hadn't distracted me. “Hey!” she says from a narrow table across the room. “You look gorgeous in these pictures!”
My mother barely tells her, “Thanks,” and keeps right on pacing.
This I had to see, so I join Marissa, who's busy turning the pages of a large black binder. She flips back to my mother's pages and says, “Check these out. Isn't that head shot great?”
I'd never seen my mother in black-and-white glossy before — only in full-spectrum color, which, believe me, includes some scary hues that not even Crayola's come up with yet.
But with all those colors filtered out, what was left was someone beautiful. There was a spot of light in each eye, and with her hair blowing back and her chin up and out she looked absolutely glamorous.
Like a movie star.
Which is probably what I should've told her, but instead I blurted out, “But you don't look anything like this anymore.” She stops pacing and flashes her eyes at me. “I …I mean your hair and everything.”
She takes a deep breath and says, “Hopefully after Monday that won't be an issue.”
On the left page of my mother's section is the head shot, and on the right is what looks like an oversized postcard that takes up the top half of the page, showing my mother in three different poses and outfits. In one she's wearing jeans, a flannel shirt, and a cowboy hat, and she's leaning against corral fencing, looking ladylike but completely at home with a lasso in her hand. Like she could ride a rodeo bull sidesaddle if you asked her to.
In the middle picture she's walking along the shoulder of the road in an evening gown, holding up a gasoline can with a you-win-some-you-lose-some look on her face, and in the third picture she's at a breakfast bar scooping cereal up to her mouth while she pores over the Wall Street Journal.
Even I have to admit that this Dominique Windsor person seems like she can handle any role. From roping cows to selling chow, she's your girl—which I suppose is how a person with a distinct aversion to anything even remotely associated with intestinal distress landed a commercial for GasAway.
Anyway, underneath the oversized postcard is a list of acting experience and credits. I happen to know that my mother hasn't exactly been Thelma Thespian for at least a decade, but according to her résumé, she has.
On the top of the list there is, of course, GasAway. Something I wish she would lie about. But beneath that is a whole string of credits: the role of Belle in Beauty and the Beast; Maria in The Sound of Music; Sandy in Grease. The list fills the page, and in almost every credit she's the leading lady.
One look at my mother, and I know she knows what I'm thinking. She's stopped pacing, her hands are on her hips, and her jaw is set. And before I can say anything, she snaps, “Well, you can't get in here with no experience!”
“So you just—”
“Shh!” She comes over to us and whispers, “Yes. But I could play any of those parts if I had to.”
Marissa says, “And they're all theatrical, so you don't have to have video clips?”
My mother looks at her with surprise. “I'm glad it wasn't that transparent to Max! I had some dummy press clips made up, but he barely glanced at those.”
I must've looked shocked, and I guess I was. I mean, first she gets a fake driver's license, then she dummies up newspaper clippings; who was this woman? Certainly not the person I knew back in Santa Martina. She laughs and says, “Sorry to disillusion you, Samantha.”
Marissa looks back at the credits and asks, “But why did you pick Great Falls, Montana? Is there even a Grande Theatre there?”
My mother winks at her. “Nope. Got torn down a few years ago. You know how people are, not supporting the arts and all.” She leans a little closer and whispers, “Actually, it was a good thing I'd been to Great Falls, because when Max learned during my interview that I was ‘born and raised’ there, that's practically all we talked about. Turns out Claire was from there.”
“His wife?”
“That's right. Fortunately for me her family moved when she was two, so he really didn't know anything about it.” She pulls a little face. “That doesn't mean I wasn't sweating it out for a little while there, though!”
It's funny. In all my years growing up with her, my mother had never admitted to a lie. There were things she just wouldn't talk about, but I always thought that was because if I did force her to talk about it, she would wind up lying, and lying was something that was—I don't know—beneath her.
But looking at her now, I realized that lying wasn't beneath her at all. She did it all the time! And as she smiled at me from across the room, she seemed proud of herself. Like, wow, hadn't she gotten away with murder?
I didn't know what to say to her, and I couldn't stand to look at her a second longer, so I joined Marissa, who was taking refuge in the pages of the big black binder.
Marissa turns over a couple of pages, then says, “Recognize her?”
I didn't need to check the name at the bottom of the page. Even with her hair dark, her eyes open, and no blue in sight, I knew it was LeBrandi.
We both shuddered as she turned the page.
I guess my mother was feeling bad about what she'd told me, because she comes up behind us and whispers, “Everyone around here does the same thing, Samantha.” She points to a list of credits on the Plaid Rabbit's page. “Do you really think Tammy was ever on Broadway? Please. She couldn't act her way out of a speeding ticket. And—”
I turned on her. “Oh, yeah? Then what's she doing here?!”
Our eyes locked, until finally my mother looks down and says, “I'm sorry. You're right. There's no need for me to start getting catty. But Tammy is sort of…I don't know… skittish. Like she's afraid of her own shadow. Every time she gets a little nervous, she has to go to the bathroom. She auditioned for the part of Jewel, too, and wound up excusing herself in the middle of that. Opal and LeBrandi told me it was all a big act, but I don't think so. Who'd want to embarrass themselves that way?”
Marissa says, “Speaking of Opal…,” and points to the name OPAL NOVAK beneath the next headshot.
My mother says, “She's still in there?” and is about to add something more when Hali walks into the room. Hali slides a large coffee-table book about Cleopa
tra aside with a big silver tray loaded with decanters and cups. She looks right through my mother, saying, “There's cocoa here, too.” She turns to go, then changes her mind and looks directly at my mother. “Max says he'll be right down. You know what you're going to tell him?”
Now, she's not talking about dead bodies in bed. And it's really starting to bug me how everyone seems to have their mind on something besides LeBrandi, so I almost feel like cheering when my mother says, “Hali, we're here to discuss LeBrandi. And I would appreciate it if you wouldn't bring that other matter up again. It's really none of your business.”
Blood rushes to Hali's cheeks, and I can tell from the way her nostrils are flaring out and her eyes are pinching in that it's not embarrassed blood—it's angry blood.
She checks down the hallway, then closes the door and snaps, “You are so wrong about that, blondie!”
“Blondie? Now wait just a minute….”
Hali steps forward, practically breathing fire through her nose. “Why would a man his age, who has everything and is surrounded by beautiful women, suddenly want to get married? Have you stopped to ask yourself this? Or are you so wrapped up in your own magnificence that you think he could actually be in love with you?”
My mother stands there, wide-eyed and petrified, and chokes out, “Hali, stop it! What's wrong with you? Why are you acting like this?”
Hali shakes her head from side to side, the beads in her hair clicking together. “It's a no-brainer, Dominique.” She gives my mother a really disgusted look, then flings the door open and marches out.
My mother stands there staring at the empty doorway with her mouth gaping open. Finally she looks at me and shakes her head. “What was that all about?”
Now, I had no idea why Hali was so mad, but I did have a pretty good idea what she was driving at. And to tell you the truth, I probably should've been revolted, but I was mostly feeling relieved. I mean, if my hunch was right, then there was no way I'd ever have to call Max Mueller Dad.