A Corpse in a Teacup (14 page)

Betsey stopped by again and this time she was able to clear the table. While she swept away crumbs, he said, “One more thing. Don’t pay attention to the news. The press never gets these things right.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Oh, you have some first hand experience?”

So she told him about visiting Olivia and the whole armoires and arsenic case.
She wanted to ask why he left his job so young, but didn’t think she should ask. Maybe he just couldn’t take the blood and gore anymore. Time to change topic. Though she was curious about one thing. He didn’t talk about another job. So what was his source of income? She didn’t think the police department paid well enough for retirement in your thirties. Investments? Maybe a family member left it to him.

Betsy returned with dessert menus.

He opened his. “Please tell me you have a sweet tooth. Their Chocolate Volcano Sundae is a killer.”

Tuesday frowned.
“Oh, I shouldn’t. I really don’t eat sugar. I just don’t allow it in my diet. Ever. Well, almost never. Sometimes you just need to fix a sinking blood sugar.”

“Well I’d say yours is heading for the
South Pole. What do you say we split one?”

Tuesday patted her stomach to show she was full.
“I have no room.”

They went back and forth and finally she said, “If you insist. But only if you tell me what you meant when you said you were an inventor. Have you invented a better mousetrap?”

He waved her comment away. “Ah, just fooling around. I like to tinker. I have a lot of time on my hands.”

Just then Betsy
called out, “Hey y’all. Clear the deck. Coming through with a bucket of poison.” She plunked down a mountain of chocolate and cream between them and a pair of plates and spoons. “Fight over it, kiddies.”

He rubbed his hands together and made a show of licking his lips. “Bring it on, woman.”

Tuesday grabbed a spoon and said, “I shouldn’t. I’m just having one bite.”

“Oh c’mon. You’re not going to let me self-destruct by myself.”

That’s when Tuesday wondered if there was someway she could sneak away and talk to Olivia for advice
. Because she knew now that she was in double trouble. On top of being the sexiest guy she had met this millennium, he was as big a sugar addict as she was.

On the drive home she called Holley. Harry had arrived with a chilled bottle of Pinot Grigio and they ordered takeout. Tuesday hung up, relieved that Holley was safe for the night. Now she could
turn her attention to Mr. Gorgeous.

The first thing that popped into her mind though, bothered her. Did he say that
Ariel’s house wasn’t disturbed? How did he know that? On the news, Detective Johnson refused to comment on that detail. A friend at the precinct must have told him. Yet he’d insisted he had no inside information. Her delight with their dinner transformed into a thrum of anxiety. Was he going to turn out to be untrustworthy after all? She’d had enough of that in her life.

Late t
he next morning, Tuesday headed over towards Larchmont Village mulling over every morsel of the previous evening, savoring the laughs, the innuendos, the sweet kisses. Her happy reverie was interrupted by her cell phone. It was Holley, but Tuesday wasn’t wearing an earpiece. She let it go into voice mail, then hit speaker and replayed the message.

Holley was frantic. She almost drove off the road when she heard her say, “Miss Tuesday, have you listened to the news?
Electra? You know, Mr. Vitale’s wardrobe person? She was found dead this morning.”

Goren Vitale nervously fiddled with a water bottle as he waited for his potential cast and crew to assemble in the rehearsal room he used for the film. Detective Jameson had called the meeting and now sat behind Vitale furiously entering notes into her iPad and whispering into the ear of her partner. The normally cheerful Detective Butel had lost his effervescence, instead giving a depressingly somber nod to each person who entered the room, gave his or her name to an officer with a checklist and found a seat in one of the hastily acquired metal folding chairs and benches. When Tuesday had shown up with Holley, Jameson allowed her to attend the meeting reluctantly. She only agreed when Tuesday reminded her that she was one of the last people to have seen Electra alive. Perhaps she might remember an important detail.

Tuesday had her own reasons for wanting to attend. She was becoming more and more protective of Holley and wanted to know what was going on.

She looked around the room and recognized most of the faces from the memorial the other night, all looking as shopworn as the director. Two deaths in one week? The element of fear clouded the room. No doubt they all wondered who would be next. Who could have done this? If asked, Tuesday would have put her money on Zora, leaning against the wall behind the director.

She wondered why Roger was not there. Surely he had been invited. The director’s wife, however, was at her husband’s side in a show of support, minus the butterfly earrings.

No doubt Brava’s appearance at the Café for lunch was a public relations tactic. She demonstrated for the public that the unfortunate death of an actress did not rattle her. What’s more, it could not possibly harm her husband’s film. But beneath her firm mouth and steady eyes, Tuesday questioned how she was really coping with the latest tragedy. How would their people spin this one? Every blog and news outlet was talking about the zombie curse, painting Goren Vitale as a magnet for death.
Lose your vitality by working for Vitale
was how one website described it.

The director
took a long swallow from his bottle of water, then cleared his throat. “Attenion, everyone. Your attention, please.”

The please came across as pathetic, yet
yhe crowd fell silent, most likely hoping for some news or action that would break the tension. Finally, Vitale took a deep breath and spoke.

“I don’t have to tell you all what a tragedy this is. If you know me, you knew
Electra. You know how much I relied on her. She created the signature look for my characters. This is an incalculable loss to me personally, as well as to everyone who knew her.”

Tuesday thought she saw Mrs. Vitale’s mouth tighten a bit. Hmm, was there trouble in the teepee over her husband’s mistress, wardrobe mistress that is?

In the beginning of the week, Monday morning at the Burbank airport, she’d heard Vitale’s name for the first time. But after many Internet searches and Holley’s input, now on Friday she felt she knew him quite well. He was the leader in a cult film genre, one that the general public hardly knew existed and mainstream reviewers ignored. His followers, however, threw money at him in the form of fan clubs, Vitale Zombie Fairs, movie reenactments, books, a zombie clothing line and the sale of millions of movie tickets worldwide. He’d created a money machine for his backers. These murders could hurt this cottage industry if fans of the grotesque on screen shunned death in real life. Vitale had a lot at stake in keeping this situation under control.

He started by calling the two deaths “one of life’s cruel coincidences.” Several people nodded in agreement, notably his wife.

“Las Vegas would love the odds of this happening twice on a zombie movie, but there you are. None of us live forever. If anything, we should all be sure that we have our annual checkups.”

From this seeming non sequitur, Tuesday saw that he was spinning
Electra’s cause of death as a previously undiagnosed illness. Goren confirmed it when he said, “Little did she know she was a walking time bomb. She was a tough cookie. You’d have thought she’d have a strong heart.”

H
e wasn’t going to damn his movie with suggestions of murder. But who was he kidding? If it was a heart attack, what were the police doing there?

He announced that this morning the LAPD would question everyone connected with the film. They hoped to have the interviews completed by mid-afternoon. His wife cut in, a vision in black and
Goth makeup.

“Everyone,” she said in her husky, accented voice,
“I have called Marco at The Mulberry Cat Café to see if he would open his kitchen early and prepare lunch for us. He said he was only too happy to oblige.”

Tuesday whispered to Holley, “What kind of pull does she have in this town if she has Marco on speed dial and can get him to drop everything to cook for her at the last minute?”

Holley and Tuesday were sitting next to Gray Star. She/he wore a similar jumpsuit to the one she’d worn to Ariel’s memorial, but in a different shade of gray. Tuesday pointed to it and asked, “Electra?” Gray Star nodded. The makeup appeared unblemished, but sadness rimmed her eyes. “We were so close,” she said, before sobbing into her hands.

Tuesday could do nothing but pat her on the shoulder. The room was filling up and she began to worry about the time. She whispered to Holley, “I can’t stay all day. I have to work at the Café this afternoon. I’m going to see if they will interview us first.”

She made her request to one of the uniformed officers who checked a list on her clipboard. She found Holley’s name, but not Tuesday’s. “That’s because I’m not part of the production,” she explained. “I’m Miss Wood’s companion.”

Her request elicited nothing but a raised eyebrow. Recognizing a lost cause when she saw one, Tuesday returned to her uncomfortable folding chair. Holley was checking her voice mail and Tuesday said, “You look glum sweetheart. Don’t tell me you got more bad news today.”

“It’s Roger. He won’t return my calls. I asked him about his wife last night after you told me he was married.”

“Past tense, Holley. He used to be married. At least that’s the story he gave me.”

“Well I asked him why he didn’t tell me. He said it was too painful to share. Then he said maybe I was right and we shouldn’t see each other any more. I asked not even as friends, and he said he didn’t think he was good for me. He had too much negative energy.”

Tuesday was surprised. W
hy would he pull back from Holley? Maybe Zora’s comments got to him. As time passed, Tuesday became more befuddled by the turn of events. “So why are you trying to reach him? Let him be, sugar. Just let him be. He’s in his own dark world and you don’t need that energy.”

Holley persisted, her huge eyes showing a mix of worry and fear. “But after everything that’s happened, I’m worried about him. He goes running in the morning on the strand out by the ocean and always calls me before he leaves his house. He doesn’t take his phone so he can get away from everything. He might not even know what’s happened to
Electra. He would hate not knowing.”

“Trust me, Holley.” Text messages were flooding Tuesday’s phone with news flashes about the latest death connected with the film. “From the news blast this story is getting, if he is within five inches
of civilization this morning, he knows. He probably heard it on his car radio.”

Holley’s head hung down and her thick hair was falling over her face. “I guess I didn’t realize how much I need him until he’s not available any more. Maybe I was too hasty about Roger. What do you think Miss Tuesday?”

“I think that’s the age old story of love. Move on, Holley, before you get in too deep.”

Holley made an unconvincing stab at looking on the bright side. “You’re right. You’re always right. But I’m just going to call him once more just to be sure.”

While Tuesday was rolling her eyes, Detective Jameson got a call. After she hung up she gathered her crew around her and fell into a deep discussion with them. Then she made an announcement.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m so sorry, but we are going to have to postpone our interviews until later today.”

“Good,” said Tuesday, grabbing her stuff to get to the Café on time.

Jameson raised her hands to try to calm the generalized grumbling.

“I know this is inconvenient and I want to thank you all for coming in on short notice, but I had no forewarning that we would be called to another assignment. We have your contact information. Someone will call you with details about when we will meet next. Again, I’m sorry.”

She gave the high sign to her partner and then led the way out of the room, behind them the seven officers on the interrogating team. Once again, Jameson and company were walking out on a meeting they had called. Tuesday wondered how they got their work done.

Gray Star started sobbing and pulling at the pointy lapels on her jumpsuit.

“I heard them,” she screamed. “I heard what they were talking about. Why they had to leave. There’s been another murder!

“Three in a week? We’re on a roll. A record for me. Yeah, it’s done.”

“Well stay put. The way things are going, we may have more work for you.”

“I need a break. This stuff takes it out of me.” He laughed. They both knew he lived for his work. Even if the targets didn’t.

“We need proof you know, before you get the last payment.”

“Don’t worry. The evidence will be on your doorstep by midnight.”

“Okay, and the check will be on yours as soon as it checks out.”

“Nice doing business with you.”

“Same to you, Clipper.”