Chapter 15
I
woke up the next morning still reeling from my date with Jim, haunted by the memory of Arnold slinging insults, slurping his whiskey sour, and slugging it out with Jim. Talk about your schizophrenic nightmares.
Prozac, never a fount of empathy, was particularly cool when I told her my tale of woe.
Boo hoo. At least you got prime rib, while all I have are the ashes of my shattered career.
Then, just when I thought my nerves couldn't get any more frazzled, I opened my e-mails from my parents and read about Daddy's raid on Lydia Pinkus's garbage.
Can you believe he actually tried on a pair of Bermuda shorts from the trash?
And how could he have been so foolish to strip down to his undies right across the street from Mrs. Mary “Eagle Eyes” Thorndahl, a woman who, for as long as anyone has known her, has been on round-the-clock lookout for burglars, UFOs, and dogs pooping on her lawn?
Oh, well. There was nothing I could do about it, so I settled down with a cinnamon raisin bagel slathered with butter and extra raspberry jam. I was in the middle of calming my nerves with
The New York Times
crossword puzzle when the phone rang.
“How's my favorite writer?” Phil Angelides's voice came sailing over the line. “Jim told me what a great time you two had last night.”
What?? The only wonderful part about that evening was when it was over.
“I can't tell you how happy that makes me, Jaine. Confidentially, Jim has had some troubles connecting with women.”
That tends to happen when you're a raving lunatic.
“And I'm so glad you're going to the Fiesta Bowl with him.”
“Say what?”
“Jim told me you two were coming to the party together.”
Absolutely negatory. No way was I going to the Toiletmasters annual bash with Jim and his fuzzy wuzzy alter ego. I'd just have to tell Phil that Jim was a perfectly lovely schizophrenic, but that we weren't a match, and I'd be coming to the party on my own.
“You are going with Jim, right?” Phil was saying. “You're not going to break his heart like his last girlfriend, are you?”
I'd just be strong and tell him No, and it would all be over. Simple as that.
“Um . . . sure, I'm going with Jim.”
Okay, so I'm a world-class coward, a sniveling weakling of the highest order. But all was not lost. I had a plan. I'd just call Phil in a day or two, tell him I'd reconciled with my mythical boyfriend Collier-Curtis, and make some excuse to get out of going to the party.
In the meanwhile, however, I had a murder to solve.
I hadn't forgotten what Nikki told me about Ian Kendrick and the actor who died under mysterious circumstances on the set of his movie.
After filling in the last clue on my crossword puzzle, I hustled over to my computer and Googled Ian. Sure enough, there were several articles about an explosion gone awry on the set of an epic called
Thunderbolt
, resulting in the death of a rising young action star named Gavin Hudson. A few stories mentioned that Ian had been brought in for questioning by the police, but the star's death had ultimately been ruled an accident.
So Dean wasn't the only one who'd clashed with Ian and wound up dead.
I most definitely needed to pay a little visit to the pony-tailed Brit.
* * *
A half hour later I was tootling over to Ian's house in the Hollywood Hills, wending my way up the steep streets, my ancient Corolla huffing and puffing every inch of the way.
When I finally got to Ian's place, I saw it was a gated estate, obscured from view by a wall of shrubbery.
What rotten luck. I was hoping to catch him unawares. Now I'd have to use the intercom at the gate and announce my presence. I pressed the buzzer, and after some static, Ian's voice, slurred with booze, came on the line.
“You from the maid service?” he asked.
“No, it's Jaine Austen. We met on the Skinny Kitty shoot. I was hoping to talk to you about Dean's murder.”
“Forget it. I've said all I'm going to say to the cops.”
With that, he cut me off, leaving me nothing but dead air. My interview was over before it began.
I was sitting there, cursing myself for not coming up with an inventive cover story, when another car pulled up behind me and honked. Turning, I saw a bright yellow Volkswagen Beetle with the words
MIGHTY MAIDS
painted on the hood.
And suddenly I knew how to get to Ian.
I grabbed my purse and hustled over to the Beetle.
Two young womenâone blond, one Hispanic, and both in maid's uniformsâwere sitting up front. The blonde sat behind the wheel, chewing a wad of bubble gum.
“You ladies here to clean Mr. Kendrick's house?” I asked.
“No, we're here for high tea,” the blonde said, blowing a bubble. “Of course we're here to clean.”
Looked like the Mighty Maids came fully equipped with mighty mouths.
“Who're you?” her partner asked.
“Actually,” I said, “I'm from the board of health.” I reached into my purse and flashed them my badge. Of course, it wasn't a board of health badge, but a USDA meat inspector badge I'd picked up ages ago at a flea market for moments just like this. “I'm afraid Mr. Kendrick's home is quarantined.”
“Quarantined?” the blonde asked, eyes wide.
“Chicken pox,” I nodded. “No visitors allowed.”
“Okay,” she said, “but he's still going to get billed for our time.”
“It's part of the contract,” her partner added. “If he doesn't cancel with twenty-four hours' notice, he pays in full.”
“Mr. Kendrick's okay with that.”
“Great.” The blonde finally graced me with a smile. “C'mon, Sylvia,” she said to her partner. “It's margarita time!”
They took off, happy to spend the next few hours at the nearest cantina, and I sprinted back to my Corolla to press the intercom buzzer.
Ian's voice came squawking through the box again.
“Who is it?”
“It's Mighty Maids, sir,” I said, disguising my voice, hoping he wouldn't realize it was still me.
“Come on in,” he snapped. “You're late.”
The gate creaked open, and I drove into what looked like a small jungle, overgrown with trees and long-neglected shrubbery. I headed up a winding pathway, wayward branches brushing against my windshield.
At last I arrived at a magnificent but crumbling old Spanish-style home with cracked red tile roof, stained stucco walls, and aggressive weeds snaking up the sides of the house.
Ian might have been using a maid service, but it clearly had been decades since this place had seen a landscaper.
I walked up to an ornate wooden door composed of intricately carved panels and, I suspected, an army of well-fed termites.
The rusted doorbell produced a loud chime, and soon I heard the shuffle of feet approaching. Seconds later, the door swung open, and there was Ian in a terry bathrobe, reeking of gin, his feet bare, his face a road map of wrinkles, and his ponytail sporting an extra layer of grease.
In his hand, he held a highball glass.
“It's about time,” he sniffed. “Hey, wait a minute. Aren't there usually two of you?”
Then, squinting at me through gin-blurred eyes, he said, “I know you. You're the woman with the impossible cat.”
“Look, I just need to talk to you aboutâ”
But before I could get out the rest of my sentence, he was reaching for the door.
Oh, hell. He was about to slam it right in my face.
“Wait!” I cried out. “If you answer some questions about Dean's murder, I'll clean your house.”
He hesitated a beat, then continued to shut the door.
“For free!” I added. “I'll clean your house for free.”
The door swung back open to reveal a smiling Ian.
“Come in, my dear,” he said, his voice plummy with good cheer.
I stepped into a massive foyer, replete with an elaborate wrought iron staircase straight from a Warner Brothers swashbuckler. Any minute now, I expected Errol Flynn to come leaping over the bannister in velvet tights.
Geez, I thought, looking around, this house was humungous. Cleaning it could take ages. No wonder Ian needed two Mighty Maids.
“Cleaning supplies are in the service porch,” Ian said, waving his highball glass vaguely toward the back of the house. “We'll talk when you're through.”
Oh, no. No way was I cleaning this mini-coliseum, only to have him change his mind and clam up on me later on.
“Nope,” I said, standing my ground. “We talk first. Then I clean.”
We locked eyeballs in a stare down, but what with all that gin coursing through his veins, it was clearly hard for Ian to stay focused.
“All right,” he said, finally looking away. “But you'd better do a good job on the bathroom grout.”
He now led me to a barn of a living room, with Spanish floor tiles and an oversized fireplace. Dusty drapes hung from floor-to-ceiling windows, and large empty squares dotted the walls where paintings once hung.
Why did I get the feeling he was selling off his assets one by one?
The only pieces of furniture in the room were a worn leather sofa, a rumpsprung armchair, and a coffee table stained from decades of sweaty highball glasses.
Ian flung himself down onto the sofa, miraculously managing to keep the flaps of his robe shut, and motioned for me to sit across from him in the armchair. Then he reached for a bottle of gin on the coffee table and refreshed his highball.
“Care for a nip?” he asked, holding out the bottle. “Glasses are in the kitchen. You'll probably have to wash one.”
“No, thanks. I'm fine.”
“Pardon the way I look,” he said. “I was just watching one of my old movies on TV.”
And indeed, the end credits were rolling on a bulky old TV on the floor near the fireplace.
Ian stared at the TV, gulping at his gin, as the movie faded out and Turner Classic Movies maven Robert Osborne popped up on the screen.
“That was one of the early films of director Ian Kendrick, who had a successful string of movies in the nineties but, after a fatal accident on the set of
Thunderbolt
, sadly faded into obscurity.”
“I'm still here, Bob,” Ian said with a bitter smile, snapping off the TV.
“That must have been a terrible time for you,” I said as gently as I could.
Ian looked at me with an air of studied nonchalance.
“Why? I had nothing to feel guilty about. If anyone should have felt guilty, it was the special effects guys. They were the ones in charge of explosives. It was a tragic accident, but I had nothing to do with it.”
I got the distinct impression he was reciting words written decades ago by a long-gone press agent.
“So Dean is the second person to have died on one of your sets,” I pointed out.
“What of it?” Ian huffed. “Just because he died on my set, that doesn't mean I killed him.”
“Do you have any idea who did?”
“Why the hell do you need to know?” he snapped, no longer the least bit nonchalant.
“Like you, Ian, I'm a suspect in Dean's murder, and I'm trying to clear my name.”
He glared at me, indignant. “Who says I'm a suspect?”
“I'm just assuming you are, since Dean was threatening to ruin your career.”
“So I had a motive to kill him. Big deal. So did half the people who ever met him. But I swear I was out in the parking lot the whole time that cat food was left unattended. I didn't go near the stuff.”
“If you didn't, who did?”
“If you ask me, it's that pipsqueak writer Zeke. Anyone could see he was dying to get Dean out of the way so he could get his hands on Linda.”
“Can you think of anyone else who might've wanted to see Dean dead?”
“I can think of everyone else. Everybody hated the guy. They were probably waiting on line to poison that cat food.”
“And you saw nobody going into the kitchen while the cat food was unattended?”
“I already told you, I was out in my car, spending quality time with my Starbucks thermos. Now is that all?”
“It certainly seems like it.”
“Okay, then,” he said, slamming his highball down on the coffee table. “Time for you to start cleaning.”
And clean I did.
I spent the next three hours hauling around an ancient vacuum, battling dust bunnies the size of honeydews, and scrubbing bathroom grout with a toothbrush. Out of the goodness of my heart, I'll spare you my encounter with The Toilets That Time Forgot.
Three hours later I was sweating like a pig. By then, I didn't care if Ian was the killer; I just wanted to go home and soak my aching muscles in a soothing bubble bath.
I'd finally made my way up to Ian's bedroom, a cavernous lair with a bare mattress on the floor and an ancient TV on a scarred dresser. Like most of the other rooms in the house, it looked like all the good furniture had been sold.
In spite of my fatigue, I began rummaging through Ian's dresser drawers, hoping I might unearth a valuable clue or, even better, some Tylenol.
But all I found were a depressing number of condoms and some magazines, the titles of which are not fit for publication in a family-friendly novel.
It was when I was vacuuming his closet, however, that I struck pay dirt. And I do mean dirt. That closet had a layer of dust thicker than a shag carpet. I was lifting a pile of moldering laundry from the floor to get in and vacuum when I saw a large book peeking out from under some unsavory undies. Plucking the undies aside, I picked up the book, which I now saw was a scrapbook.