A Talent for Murder (9 page)

“And you”—she gave Placenta a hug—”please be a doll and set up a luncheon for us and that young man that we saw Thane thrashing the first day on the show. Let’s say tomorrow. Noon. The Polo Lounge.”

Placenta turned to Tim. “There goes our fun night out!”

Polly entered the house and quickly ascended the Scarlett O’Hara Memorial Staircase. “Bath time,” she sang out. “I’m coming, Mr. Bubbles.”

The family didn’t see Polly again until she wandered back into the house at ten o’clock the next morning.

As Polly led her troupe into the lobby of the Beverly Hills Police Station, and sauntered up to the front desk, Polly sang out to the policewoman with the Adam’s apple, “I’m hee-re!”

“I win, boys,” the policewoman said to her colleagues. Then she looked at Polly. “We all wagered bets on how long it would take you to show up after prisoner 7189B was booked. I’m only off by three hours and fifteen minutes,” she said in her raspy voice.

“We’ve missed you too, Wilma!” Polly smiled brightly.

“Wrong Flintstone. It’s Betty.”

Polly snapped her fingers. “Drat! That’s who I meant!”

“You may as well save your act for the next Jerry Lewis Telethon, TV Star Lady, ‘cause no one, not even you, can see this prisoner.”

Polly’s smile remained constant, although her voice took on a vague edge of irritation. “How do you know I didn’t just pop in to invite you to dinner at the plantation?”

The policewoman stood up from her desk and rose to her full six-foot-plus height. “Promises, promises.”

“Um, I absolutely did! I’ll check my calendar and have Placenta give you a jingle.”

“Sorry, Miss Pepper, but I have my orders,” Betty said.

As Polly fruitlessly used all of her tricks and celebrity magnetism to convince the policewoman that she absolutely had to see and speak to Lisa Marrs, Tim
met the gaze of another officer and wandered over to chat with him. In a few moments, Tim returned to his mother’s side. He looked at Officer Betty and offered his most seductive smile. “Thanks for your time, ma’am. We’ll be leaving.” Tim took his mother by the elbow and guided her toward the front door. “I’ll make sure that you’re invited to dinner soon. I promise,” he called back.

As Polly protested, Tim whispered, “Just hush for a few minutes.”

As the trio exited the building and made their way back to the car, Tim looked at his watch. “Betty goes to lunch in five minutes.”

Placenta cackled. “That cute rookie, Garrett—yeah, I saw you two, and I looked at his badge, too—promised to get us in to see Lisa?”

Tim smiled. “What good are blue eyes, dimples, and all those hours in the gym if I can’t use ‘em to get to home base? But we’ve only got twenty minutes!”

“Not bad son-in-law material,” Polly said.

“All we need is a cop for Placenta and we’ll have our very own Bel Air patrol unit.”

Five minutes later, Polly, Tim, and Placenta were escorted down a long corridor toward the prison cells. When they reached Lisa Marrs’s concrete room behind a steel door, Officer Garrett knocked on the shatterproof glass. “Ma’am, Tim, er, Miss Polly Pepper, is here to see you.” He then looked at Tim. “The Abby? Seven o’clock?”

Tim smiled, his killer dimples revving the rookie’s heart rate to NASCAR zoom-zoom. “Drinks are on me,” Tim said.

Garrett then unlocked the cell door. “I’ll be back in twenty. You have to be ready to run, or we’ll all be in
Poohville.” He relocked the cage door and left the prisoner and her guests to their privacy.

Lisa Marrs looked unhealthily thin, and hadn’t had a smear of makeup since being incarcerated. Polly opened her purse and withdrew a tube of concealer. She applied a dollop to her index finger and approached Lisa.

“What the hell?” Lisa backed up against her bed.

“Just hold still for a teensy weensy moment, honey. Your pores are giving me the willies.” Polly cautiously applied the makeup onto Lisa’s face. “There!” Polly announced as if completing the final touches on a work of art. “Doesn’t that make you feel like a million?”

“Oh yeah. I’m in hell, but I look good enough to date the homeless drunk in the next cell!” Lisa said. “Jeez, lady, you’re as loony as Thane said you were!”

Polly was taken aback. “Then thank you for saving me from having to kill him myself!”

“I did not kill Thane Cornwall!” Lisa cried. “Why doesn’t anybody believe me?”

“Maybe because you were caught in the act of doing the deed,” Placenta said.

“But I wasn’t! The maid came in
after
I found Thane. She doesn’t even speak good English!”

“Confess, dear. She saw you holding the knife,” Polly declared. “You were the only wacko in sight.”

“So what’s your version of the story?” Placenta said. “You’d better make it interesting ‘cause Polly Pepper’s got a severe case of ADD, and the evidence is piled sky-high against you, babe.”

“I’ve told everyone the same thing over and over!” Lisa implored. She was quiet for a long minute, then spoke. “Okay. Again. For the bajillionth time. I went to Thane’s house because Richard Dartmouth sent me. You
were there. You know that’s the truth. I rang the doorbell forever. Then I decided to let myself in.”

“If no one was home, why would you bother going inside?” Polly asked.

“Thane’s Lamborghini was parked in the driveway. I figured he was there but ignoring me.”

“If a person doesn’t answer their door, it makes sense that they probably don’t want visitors,” Polly agreed.

Lisa shrugged. “That’s what I thought. But Richard would have killed
me
if I didn’t drag Thane’s butt to the meeting. He’s not as tolerant of his assistants as he is of the stars he kisses up to,” she said. “He hasn’t even come to visit me, or sent me a note of support.”

“Okay. So you’re outside the house, and…” Polly said.

“I remember that the security system wasn’t activated.”

“It was daytime,” Placenta said.

“Yeah, but Thane was paranoid about being burgled … or worse,” Lisa said. “He kept the system activated twenty-four-seven.”

“Of course, you knew the code because you’d used it often enough. Like the night before?” Polly said.

Lisa swallowed hard. “I suppose my affair with Thane is making news everywhere.”

Tim sniggered. “I don’t mean to laugh, but
Daily Variety
said, ‘Psycho Secretary in Pillow Talk before the Big Chill.’“

“Then I’m probably as dead as he is.”

“The media are having a blast playing up the jilted lover angle,” Polly continued. “The
Peeper
is concluding that yours is a case of being cast aside for a new play toy.”

Lisa looked down. “That sums it up,” she said
almost in a whisper. “After we made love Friday night, the SOB told me I needed to join a gym.”

“Yikes! That’s insulting,” Tim said. “Thane wasn’t exactly God’s gift.”

“You can say that again. I got angry. I said I was leaving him. He laughed at me. He said that I was saving him the trouble of dumping me. He told me to get permanently lost.” Lisa’s voice broke as she cried.

For a moment, the entire jail cell was quiet. Then Lisa looked up and declared, “But he wasn’t worth killing! I didn’t do what they say I did!” She began to weep again.

Placenta withdrew a Kleenex from her pocket and handed it to Polly to give to Lisa.

“We don’t have many ticks of the clock left, honey,” Polly said, looking at her Cartier wristwatch. “Fast-forward this melodrama. You’re trespassing in Thane’s house. You see … what?”

“At first, nothing,” Lisa continued. “Nothing unusual, that is. I didn’t want to startle Thane, so I called out his name a few times. As I wandered through the house and down the hallways, I kept calling his name. I even went into the backyard, thinking he might be in the pool. Then I figured he was probably in the steam room, or in bed with someone, so I went to his suite. It’s way in the back of the house, where he might not have heard me earlier. The door was closed. As I got nearer I listened carefully. I didn’t hear anything. So again I called his name. No answer. I knocked on the door. Nothing. I suppose I should have called 911 before going in there, but I never expected …”

“What?” asked Polly.

Lisa looked at Polly. “Thane was in bed. Facedown. Naked. The sheet drawn to his waist. Blood … every
where! At first I didn’t do anything except try not to throw up. I guess I was in shock. Then I heard a noise and realized that whoever stabbed Thane might still be in the house. I saw a bloodied knife on the floor, so I picked it up for self-defense. That’s when Thane’s maid, Ophelia, came in. She looked at me. Then she looked at Thane’s body. She said, ‘Miss Lisa!’Then something in Spanish. She looked really frightened and slowly backed out of the room. When she got to the door she closed it behind her. I heard her scream, ‘Miss Eva! Miss Eva! Nine-one-one! Nine-one-one!’ I guess that’s when I fainted.”

“Miss Eva? The new significant other?” Polly asked.

“Thane’s stupid Persian cat.”

“Did you see anything that might suggest someone else had been there after you left the night before?” Polly asked.

“Besides a dead body? A butcher’s knife on the bedroom floor? Bloody bedsheets? No.” Lisa shook her head. “But it was damn odd that the security chimes weren’t on. It’s possible that Thane might have forgotten to turn the alarm system on, but he would never have been in the house—even if he had company—without the chimes that signaled whenever any outside door opened.”

Suddenly the door at the entrance slammed open. Officers Betty and Garrett marched into Lisa’s cage. With her arms folded across her chest, Betty looked first at Polly, then at Tim and Placenta. Finally she looked at Officer Garrett.

“They made me!” Garrett cried.

“Yeah, they’re a really scary posse,” Betty snarled. “Complain to the bartender at the Abby. You’ll have plenty of time to hang out there with your new friend
’cause I’m petitioning to place you on administrative leave!”

Garrett looked at Tim and shrugged. Then, with his thumb and little finger against his ear, he made the international sign for “Call me.”

“P
olicewoman Betty has better developed biceps than Stallone on steroids,” Polly said as they drove out of the Beverly Hills Police Station parking lot. “Remind me to hire her the next time we need the piano moved.”

Tim drove the Rolls to Sunset Boulevard and turned left heading toward the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Polly looked around. “I thought we were going to Lisa’s hovel.”

“I called her landlady, she won’t let us in,” Placenta said.

Polly rolled her eyes. “Contacting her was a mistake. The surprise of finding Polly Pepper on one’s crummy apartment doorstep is what does the trick. We’ll tackle her later.”

“That leaves more time for lunch with Michael Mc-Grath,” Placenta reminded her.

“Not another of Tim’s
Dancing With the Stars
studs,” Polly said. “How many of those talented men have you dated this year?”

Tim sighed. “This is the kid who worked for Thane.

Remember? The guy who was ripped apart that first day? You asked Placenta to set up lunch with him.”

“Drat! I need a nap,” Polly complained.

Tim ascended the long driveway leading up to the hotel valet, and accepted a receipt ticket in exchange for the Rolls. A liveried attendant assisted Polly and Placenta from the backseat and made a great show of being overly solicitous because of the ritzy car in which they arrived.

As the trio entered the plush lobby of the world-famous hotel, Polly led the way to one of her favorite watering holes. Stepping into the room, she looked at the maitre d’ and cried out, “Karl!
Grube mein freund
!” Polly accepted Karl’s air kiss to each cheek and stood aside as he expressed the same gesture to Tim and Placenta. “The sultan has you working on such a lovely day! Ogre!” Polly said. “Tell him to go back to Brunei!”

When Polly thought of the Polo Lounge, she thought of Karl (although she never knew his last name). A great and accommodating gentleman, he had been with the Beverly Hills Hotel as it had been bought and sold by one zillionaire after another. Now, after nearly fifty years working at what was affectionately known as “the Pink Palace,” Karl continued to welcome stars, and subtly reject unaccompanied single men and women when he sensed that they were there to prey on his wealthy clientele.

“Your guest has been seated. Please follow me, Miss Pepper,” Karl said as he picked up three menus and wended his way past tables of diners who all looked up and wondered if the elegantly dressed woman passing by was anyone of note. Polly’s keen ears picked up several stray comments.

“Isn’t that…? You know her name … she used to be …”

“Don’t look now, but I think Shirley MacLaine just walked by!”

“Who’s the redhead with the lousy dye job?”

As Polly tried to ignore the peasants, Karl guided her to her favorite table. The freckle-faced young man whom she had last seen crying in the television studio stood up to greet her. Sotto voce, Polly asked, “What’s his name again?”

“Michael,” Tim reminded her.

“Sweetheart!” Polly called out, loud enough to cause the other diners to look in her direction. Then she offered her hand for him to shake while she palmed a twenty-dollar bill off to the
maitre d’. “Danka
, Karl,” she said as he pulled out a chair for her.

Polly returned her attention to her guest. “You look so much more adult without red eyes and a runny nose!” she said to Michael as she patted his forearm. “That was such a horrid day for me, having to see you suffer so! By the way, this is my son, Tim, and our maid-slash-bff Placenta.” Polly looked up at a waiter who had appeared at her side. “Thank you, Lance. My usual would be lovely, dear. We’ll all have the same.”

As soon as the waiter departed to retrieve drinks for the table, Polly looked intently at Michael. “I guess this is a good news/bad news sort of day, isn’t it? The good news, of course, is that you’re having lunch with me, Polly Pepper. The bad news is that your boss, Thane Cornwall, is probably sitting in the big audition room in the sky with that
Star Search
guy.”

“Still alive,” Tim whispered out of the corner of his mouth.