Looks to Die For (35 page)

I swallowed hard and unwittingly glanced at the Kors clutch next to me. Julie caught the fleeting look and grabbed for the bag. I tried to snatch it back, but she quickly dumped the contents on the bench. Everything fell out — except the digital recorder, which I’d tucked inside a zippered compartment. She flipped open my cell phone, apparently thinking someone was listening on the other end. Then she saw the
I
’
MOK
message I’d already prepared, along with Molly’s number. She hit
SEND
.

“Let me correct you on something,” she said coolly, as if nothing had happened. “Johnny asked your husband to give him back the money from his operation. Your husband complied. That’s not blackmail.”

“I saw the emails asking for money. That’s blackmail,” I said, trying to keep my voice as calm as hers.

“Yes, it is, but Johnny didn’t write them.”

“Who did? Drew Barrymore?”

Julie looked at me blankly, then snorted. “Tasha sent them. Though she didn’t do anything alone. Nora was the brains in their operation.”

Now I was the one with the blank look. “What are you talking about?”

Julie opened and closed the cover on my phone a few times, then tossed it aside. “Johnny had confided everything in Tasha. I don’t know why. She had that Idaho innocence that made him trust her. She came up with the idea of getting money from your husband. When Johnny didn’t want to, she threatened to leave him. So he did it and gave her the money. She spent every dime.”

I thought of the fancy bedroom. A thirty-thousand-dollar job easily. She must have instinctively known she’d be working from there.

“So Johnny needed more cash from Dan to keep Tasha happy,” I said.

Julie snorted. “Only this time he talked to me. He didn’t want to end up back in jail. We hadn’t exactly been pals, but he’s my brother. I pulled some strings, got him into the union, and gave him work as a grip. I knew he was giving most of his salary to Tasha, but at least he was keeping straight.”

His alibi had been real. He’d been miles away the night Tasha was killed, and so had Julie.

“So how did you find out that the blackmail was still going on?” I asked.

Julie looked away, and suddenly I got it. I felt my throat tightening.

“Nora told you,” I said softly. “The day I dropped her at your father’s house.”

Julie played with her pendant and picked an imaginary piece of lint off her jacket. “It happens we were all there that day. Johnny was living with my dad and I’d come by to visit. I saw you outside and told Johnny who you were. He ran out before I could stop him.”

In the car, Johnny hadn’t been trying to scare me away — he was taking his vengeance because he thought Dan had killed the woman he loved. The one woman who had pretended to love him.

“Blackmail’s easy, isn’t it?” asked Julie bitterly. “You learn the technique and you just keep going. Nora would get all the money from your husband now. Five thousand every month or so. But she had a bigger idea. She knew Johnny had killed someone years ago. No statute of limitations on murder, and she thought fifty thousand was a fair amount to keep him from going back to jail.”

I stood up and started backing away from the bench. I suddenly understood. I had the story right — but the motive wrong. Dead wrong. Nora wasn’t a good girl who’d killed her friend and then committed suicide in a moment of remorse. She was an angry girl — an overweight Midwesterner in cheap clothes who barely existed in the glamorous world of L.A. Overlooked and ignored, she’d tried to find her place attached to Tasha. But Nora had come with dreams, too. She wouldn’t be a famous actress, but she would be the one pulling the strings. The one raking in all the money. She wasn’t beautiful, but she wanted to matter.

Now I could imagine the fight in the apartment in different terms. Nora demanding a bigger cut from Tasha. They were partners, after all — so why was Tasha taking all the cash? Fifty-fifty on the blackmail. Fifty-fifty on the porn tapes. When Tasha tried to flick her away, as she always had, the loser friend had had enough. Her turn to be in the spotlight.

The need to find some significance to her life wasn’t new. Nor was the anger at being marginalized. There was even a good chance Nora had planned the murder while she was still in Twin Falls. Talking about how long it would take her to drive back so she’d have an alibi. Sending a flurry of intimidating emails to Dan to assure that he’d be at the apartment that night. Leaving the note in the front foyer telling Dan to wait so the scene would seem more realistic.

Nora didn’t need Tasha anymore. She was better off on her own. She could try to keep getting payments from Dan. She could blackmail Johnny. She could use the sex tapes to connect to Roy. She wasn’t appalled by the porn — she just wanted to get her part of it. Maybe she could cut herself into his business, selling drugs and porn. Much better than what Tasha offered.

I continued shuffling backward towards the door. Because now I also knew what had happened in the DeVito house that day.

“You didn’t plan to kill Nora,” I said quietly, inching slowly away. “But you didn’t have much choice. She was a threat to your brother. Blackmailing him and blackmailing on behalf of him. It had to stop.”

“She’d killed Tasha and she was a dangerous bitch,” said Julie.

“Not to mention incredibly grating,” I added, almost in sympathy.

“I’ll say,” said Julie, with a little laugh. For a moment, I could imagine that we were two friends in the locker room, blow-drying our hair and gossiping together after a tough workout.

Only this place didn’t have any blow-dryers. And Julie wasn’t my friend.

She lunged for me, her leg flying upward in a perfect kung fu kick. Her flat heel smashed into my skull with tremendous force, spinning me ninety degrees before I started to crumple. My head cracked into the corner of the bench as I fell, then reverberated off the hard tile floor. I saw blood — mine — trickling across the floor and I wheezed in pain. But I didn’t lose consciousness. I couldn’t. Despite the black spots in front of my eyes, I saw my car keys inches away from me under the bench, where Nora had dumped them. But I couldn’t risk crawling over to get them.

I tried to stand up, figuring I’d make a run for it. But as I got to my knees, Julie landed another kick, this one to the back of my neck. I fell down flat, unable to move. Had she severed my spine? I groaned and managed to turn onto my side in time to see Julie ripping one of the shower curtains from its hooks. Then she was back, rolling the fabric around and around my limp body. I tried to fight her off, but my hands just clawed at the air, and in a moment, my arms were bound at my sides. I was wrapped as tightly as King Tut. The slimy plastic covered my mouth and nose and I coughed, fighting for air and trying to breathe.

“No, you can’t die yet,” Julie said, pulling the material down. “I learned my lesson with Nora. Easy to mimic suicide. But you don’t move the body afterwards. You’ll die when I’m ready to kill you.”

She wrapped duct tape around my bound form, then disappeared for a minute, coming back wheeling a bright orange hand truck, the kind used to lug boxes. Or to move mats and weights in the gym.

She rolled the metal platform under me, then tipped it back, pushing forward now easily. She might have been transporting a dumbbell. And I guess she was.

I couldn’t see where we were going, but then she seemed to jam the hand truck against a wall.

“Scream and I’ll tape your mouth shut,” she said. I thought of Gracie’s directive to shout “Fire!” but I wasn’t in much of a position to holler anything. Just to be sure, Julie pulled the plastic back over my face and left.

I’d almost passed out by the time she returned, but I made myself snap back in time to realize we were moving again. I heard the sound of a cheap metal door squeaking. And then we were outside, in what I guessed was an alley behind the gym. The night seemed damp and sticky — or maybe that was just how I felt inside my plastic tomb. Suddenly I was rising. On my way to heaven so soon? No, just a lift on the hand truck hauling me about three feet off the ground. Julie gave a mighty push, and I landed first on a soft cushion, then slammed down hard on a stiff, bumpy surface. I craned my neck until I was able to see out an inch and realized I was in the backseat of my own Lexus. Julie must have pulled it around. I’d bought the car for the extra cargo space. Who knew the cargo would be me?

Julie got in the driver’s seat, and then threw something back to me. My Michael Kors bag.

“I sent the ‘OK’ message again. Wouldn’t want anyone to worry. I’ll keep sending it until you’re dead,” Julie said nastily.

“You don’t have to kill me, Julie.” My voice was so muffled that I wasn’t sure she could hear. “I’ll do anything you want.”

“I’m not going to kill you, you’re going to kill yourself,” Julie said, turning on the motor and starting to drive. “It’s all planned. Your suicide note is right here. It’s very touching. You confess that you killed Nora because she knew too much. You can’t bear the pain anymore of what your husband did. You ask that your friend Molly raise your children when he goes to jail.”

Inside my sweaty, stale casing, I swallowed hard. Nobody was raising my family except Dan and me. Who else could talk to Grant about string theory, to Ashley about stringy hair, and to Jimmy about string cheese? And then there was Ashley’s plan to redecorate her room. What if I wasn’t around and instead of the Persian I’d picked, she bought one of those pink shag carpets from Pottery Barn Teen? I’d be spinning in my grave.

My situation was definitely grave — in every sense. But there had to be a way out. I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate. What would Sammie do in her screenplay?

Pleading was out. Telling Julie I’d do anything hadn’t made any impression. Trying to connect on a human level? Hadn’t done any good that day with Johnny Devito, and I wasn’t sure Julie had a human side, anyway. I’d certainly never seen it. Maybe Molly would get nervous after all and call the police. But they’d know only to go to Sanford’s gym. Jerry DeVito wasn’t about to tell them where we’d gone. In fact, he probably didn’t even know. Julie had turned crooked after the rest of the family went straight.

“So how do you want to kill yourself?” asked Julie conversationally. “I have some drugs if you’d like to OD. But you don’t seem very cooperative. With Nora, I cuffed her hands and put a plastic bag over her head. But there can’t be any doubts with you that it’s suicide. I have a gun and I don’t mind using it. Definitely the quickest. But I’m partial to carbon monoxide in the garage. Kind of a woman’s way to kill herself, don’t you think?”

If she was expecting an answer from me, I didn’t have one, because I was busy trying to work my right arm out of the casing. I’d managed to find a little slack in the material, and my hand was inching upward. At about my shoulder, it got stuck again, and try as I might, I couldn’t budge anymore. I almost screamed in frustration.

But I’d been in tight situations before — like the night I wore that size 6 Dolce & Gabbana gown to a charity ball with Dan. I’d gotten into it, but it wasn’t clear how I’d get out of it. I’d managed, after ten minutes of patient squirming. Now I had to get out of this. I turned my shoulders slightly and got my elbow in front of my chest, then pushed my arm up with all the energy I could muster. My hand flew forward, suddenly released from the tight wrapping. I wasn’t helpless after all.

My little victory got my blood pumping again — quite literally. My arm had fallen asleep, and now that I could move it, pins and needles prickled from my shoulder to wrist. I clenched and un-clenched my fist, and as soon as I got some sensation back, I groped around the small area I could reach, feeling for something I could use to defend myself. Under the seat of the car, my fingers squished into a handful of discarded raisins and the Legos that Jimmy played with on long rides. Then I felt a football, an electronic toy, and a pile of action figures — all the comic book heroes Jimmy worshiped. Boy, I could use a real Superman now. I’d even settle for Halle Berry as Catwoman.

Should I hurl one of the toys through the window to attract attention? I wouldn’t get much leverage from my position on the floor, and even the heaviest would probably just bounce off the safety glass and land on my back. Aim for Julie? I remembered all the times I’d warned Jimmy and his friends that distracting the driver was dangerous. Maybe it was, but the likelihood of a tossed football getting Julie into an accident was minimal.

I listened carefully to the sounds outside the car. Local roads, not a thruway. Some cars passing. Not a completely deserted neighborhood yet. I didn’t know where Julie was taking me. But once we arrived at the destination, I’d be dead in minutes. Julie had her plan. She’d probably already scrawled my signature on the suicide note.

I pulled myself forward, painfully crawling along the car floor an inch at a time. My free hand finally felt the door, and I reached for the handle. Please God, don’t let Julie know about backseat child locks. I had one chance. We weren’t going fast, but I couldn’t imagine flinging myself from a moving car. Wait until we stopped, though, and it might be too late.

Even in my facedown position, I could tell we weren’t in total darkness. Still an area with streetlights, which probably meant people around. Now or never.

In the smoothest move I could manage, I clutched the door handle and yanked myself upward. I flung open the door and launched myself forward.

“Help!”
I screamed as loudly as I could.
“Fire!”

A screeching of brakes from somewhere. The crunching of two cars colliding. Me, pitching to the pavement.

“What the hell…” I heard someone say.

And then I blacked out.

Chapter Sixteen

I
insisted on leaving
the hospital for Dan’s court hearing, even though my neck was in a brace, my arm was in a cast, and I was having trouble breathing thanks to my broken ribs. But who cared? I’d had a concussion but not gone into a coma. The doctor shook his head and said I was a lucky woman. Which, frankly, was exactly how I felt.