Murder on a Silver Platter (A Red Carpet Catering Mystery Book 1) (8 page)

Chapter 13

Penelope arrived at Joey’s apartment slightly after nine thirty, later than she had promised.

He opened the door with a smile. If he thought it was too late for her to visit, he didn’t act like it. “There she is,” he said, motioning for her to enter. “I was getting ready to put out an APB on you. Here, let me take your coat.”

Penelope slid her messenger bag off of her shoulder and onto the floor, propping it up against her leather boot. She slipped off her puffy coat and handed it to him.

“You look nice,” he said. He hung her coat in a small closet in the hallway.

Penelope thanked him, temporarily forgetting the makeover Kelley had given her. She picked her messenger bag back up from the floor and clutched it tightly in both hands. “Sorry I’m late. I have something to show you.” She reached inside her bag, pulled out five tubes of lip gloss and held them out for him to see.

“Gee, thanks. Normally people bring wine.”

The tension left Penelope’s shoulders and she let out a small laugh. “Ha. Good one. No, these are Arlena’s, from her on-set makeup kit. I think they’ve been tampered with. One of these might have caused her allergic reaction today.”

Joey’s face grew serious as he looked down at the tubes in Penelope’s hand. “What are you talking about, Penny?”

“They smell…bad. Fishy. I think someone laced these lip gloss tubes with seafood so they would come in contact with Arlena and trigger an attack. The makeup artist used one of these on Arlena right before it happened.”

“Hang on.” Joey went down the hall into what Penelope guessed was a bathroom, returning a few seconds later with some tissues. “Put them on the counter.” He laid the tissues down and she placed them on top of them. “I’ll take these in tomorrow and we can find out if they’ve been tampered with. You know what it means if they have, right?”

“I know. Not an accident,” Penelope said, resigning herself to the possibility that someone might be trying to harm her friend.

“Thanks for bringing them to me. I’ll check into them first thing in the morning. Let’s talk in here.” Joey nodded towards the living room. His apartment had an open floor plan anchored by a sleek kitchen with a large island topped with white marble and lined with black swiveling stools. His apartment had a masculine feel, with lots of dark leather and green-tinted glass tables. Joey’s walls were lined with framed prints from the Museum of Modern Art.

“Sure, thanks.” Penelope wandered into the room, glancing at each of the prints that hung in shiny black frames. “You’re an art fan?”

The rear wall of the apartment had a set of double doors leading onto a balcony that stretched the length of the apartment with a view of the Hudson River and the faint lights of the New York City skyline beyond it.

“I can’t draw a straight line, but I like to look at things by people who can. I go to shows at the Met from time to time, a gallery show once in a while. Would you like a glass of wine?”

Penelope had been floating slightly outside of herself ever since she discovered the tainted lip gloss, turning the information over and over in her head and thinking about how she would present it to Joey. She didn’t remember the drive over to his apartment. But she refocused then, coming back to the present. She was standing in Joey’s living room and he was offering her wine.

“Sure…if you’re having some,” she said.

Joey turned and headed towards the kitchen. He was wearing a tight grey t-shirt and nice fitting dark jeans with soft leather shoes. Penelope realized she hadn’t seen him in anything but a suit until now. Well, a suit and an ill-fitting parochial school uniform back in grade school. She glanced around the living room while she waited for him and noticed a bookcase angled next to an overstuffed leather easy chair in the far corner. He had grouped his books by author, and she could see his favorites were Stephen King and Raymond Chandler.

Penelope drifted back towards the kitchen and hoped he didn’t think she was too nosy, sizing up his things in the living room. Joey pulled the cork from a bottle of cabernet and poured them each a glass. It almost felt like she was on a date, except for the fact she was here to discuss Holly Anderson’s murder.

“What did you want to ask me?” Penelope said, swirling her glass.

Joey came around the island and motioned for them to return to the living room. They sat down next to each other on the couch.

“We’ve been going through Holly’s computer and phone records. She did reach out to Richard Tangelo, Arlena’s photographer, to inquire about headshots, but when she asked to make an appointment, he told her how much the consultation alone would cost and she thanked him and said she’d call back, which never happened.” Joey took a sip of wine and placed his glass on the table. He picked up a folder lying in the center of the glass. “Tangelo has been working out of his LA office this week, which we were able to confirm with his staff.” Joey leafed through a thick stack of documents and reports, finally pulling one from the pile that looked like a phone bill.

Penelope nodded. “It makes sense she would try and get the same headshot photographer if she was trying to follow in Arlena’s footsteps. But that doesn’t mean anything. Lots of girls want to be like the famous people they admire. And there are tons of photographers in the city.”

“That’s true. Right now we’re looking for connections between Arlena and Holly, tracking Holly’s movements.” He scanned the list of numbers and pointed to a note he had scrawled next to one of them. “Who is Peter Gessner?” he asked. “Holly called his office multiple times in the two weeks before she was killed.”

“That’s Arlena’s agent,” Penelope said, pulling the paper closer to her so they were both holding it by opposite sides of the sheet between them. She slid closer to Joey on the couch, feeling a tingle of static where their legs almost touched. She ignored it and looked through the list.

“She didn’t make many calls,” Penelope said.

“But she sent over a hundred texts a day,” Joey sighed. “Unfortunately those are more difficult to trace. The content anyway. We can see the numbers she was texting. Lots of friends at her school, her parents, the usual.”

“That’s a ton of numbers to sort through,” Penelope said, shaking her head.

“I know,” he said, releasing his side of the report. “Still…see if anything jumps out at you.”

She continued to look through the numbers.

“Her computer searches were very focused on Arlena, Max and Randall Madison and any projects they were working on. She researched Arlena’s family like she was doing a term paper on them,” Joey said, leafing through the folder again.

“If she thought she was related to them, that’s understandable. Did you find any evidence that she was Arlena and Max’s sister?”

“We have her birth certificate which states her mother and father are Cheryl and Bradley Anderson, the same parents that she resided with in Lower Manhattan at the time of her death. She was born at Bellevue in 1997. Both of her parents confirm she was their natural daughter, no surrogacy, sperm donor, adoption…” He trailed off, making a circular motion with his hand indicating any other possibility. “They’ve been together since middle school, the Andersons. Dated all through high school, both went to New York state colleges, and they got married right after they graduated. Holly came along soon afterwards.”

“It’s so sad. I know teenage girls grow up fast these days, but she still seems like such a baby,” Penelope said.

“By all accounts she was a great kid. Did well in school, helped take care of her little brothers. Liked hanging out with her friends, a normal kid.” He began organizing the reports again, stacking them into a neater pile. When he lifted them up to tap them on the table to straighten the stack, a picture slid onto the glass. Penelope picked up the photograph and held it by the corner. It was a family portrait of the Andersons, Holly’s parents posing behind their three kids, Holly to the left of her twin brothers who looked about six years old in the picture.

“Is this recent?” Penelope asked.

“Yeah, last fall. Holly was fifteen when it was taken,” Joey said. He closed the gap between them on the couch and looked at the photo with Penelope.

She felt the warmth coming off of him and fought the urge to lean in. It was getting late and he was looking good. His biceps strained against the fabric of his t-shirt and his torso had that perfect inverted V shape as he leaned back and forth sorting through his reports. Penelope figured she should probably leave before she got herself into trouble. She refocused on the picture in her hand.

“Honestly, I can see where Holly would have questions,” Penelope said. “Look at them.” She glanced at Joey and held the photo up to shine more light on it. Holly’s father was as fair as Penelope, with blond hair and blue eyes and a strong chin on his handsome face. Her mom looked Greek or Italian but was also fair skinned with wavy reddish brown hair. Holly’s little brothers were the spitting image of their dad, towheaded boys with blond freckles sprinkled across their noses, different enough to not be identical twins. The boys had wide toothy grins and their mom’s hand was draped over one of their shoulders.

And then there was Holly sitting to the left of her brothers, underneath her dad, his hand placed gently on her shoulder. She was dark and beautiful with wide set brown eyes and long black hair. She had the same smile as her mother and there was a similarity in the bridge of their noses, but she was slender and lean where her mom was thicker in the arms and waist. In fact, Holly looked like a fragile bird compared to the rest of her family, who all looked rugged and hearty, like they’d be at home toiling in a potato field.

“I see what you mean,” Joey said. “But doesn’t every girl fantasize about being someone else? About being related to some long lost famous relative and then becoming famous themselves?”

“Not every girl, I’m sure,” Penelope said. “But if Holly had found something out or came across some information that made her think she was Randall Madison’s long lost daughter…she seemed to be taking it more seriously than most young girls with a half-baked fantasy of stardom.”

“True.” Joey looked at the photograph again. “She does resemble Arlena,” he said, shrugging.

Penelope picked up the phone records again and pointed to a number. “Who was she calling in Gruver, Texas? Most of these other calls are to LA or New York.”

“I noticed that one earlier. It’s a company called DIY-DNA.” He grabbed his iPhone from the table and tapped the glass, opening the company’s website and showing it to her.

“Discreet DNA testing at home,” Penelope read from the screen. “Look, you can click there and they’ll send you a collection kit.”

“So Holly wanted to test her DNA. It does seem she was more than a little curious about all of this.”

“If Holly wanted definitive proof that she was related to the Madisons, DNA would be the way to go,” Penelope said. “Maybe that’s why she came to our house the other night. Could be she was trying to get inside somehow, ask Arlena for a DNA sample or take something from our trash so she could run the test.”

“It’s a possibility,” Joey agreed. He took another sip of wine.

Penelope turned sideways on the couch to face him. “Maybe someone found out she was suspicious and came after her, someone who didn’t want her to get a DNA test. But who would kill a young girl because she was trying to prove where she came from?”

“That’s the question. It opens up more possibilities,” Joey agreed. “I don’t like the parents for this though. I can’t see either of them leaving her out there in the cold to die alone. Plus, the driver said she was by herself when he dropped her off. Holly’s parents are really broken up by all of this. They seem like a close-knit family. Of course we can’t rule anything out.”

Penelope looked again through the list of phone numbers.

“First I’ll find out why she was calling DIY-DNA, see if she was only requesting information or if she was following up on a test. If she got her hands on something of Arlena’s from the trash, she might have been calling about the results. Maybe she went to your house to introduce herself as Arlena’s long lost sister.”

Penelope glanced at Joey’s phone which had faded back to his screen saver, a small version of Edvard Munch’s
The Scream
. The clock said it was past ten. “I should get going,” she said, taking another sip of wine.

“You’re welcome to stay as long as you like,” Joey said. “Are you hungry? I have some cheese and things I could bring out.”

“Oh, no. Don’t go to any trouble.”

“It’s no trouble. It’s already put together. Let me grab it. I’d feel better knowing you had something in your stomach.” He picked up the bottle of wine and motioned to her, asking silently if she would like some more. She pinched her fingers together in the air to indicate “just a little.” He filled her glass halfway again and then topped off his own.

Joey disappeared into the kitchen for a moment and returned with a plate piled high with various cheeses, crackers and grapes. Penelope slid forward to the edge of the couch, crossing her legs and resisting the urge to bounce her foot.

She took a piece of bread and placed a slice of brie on top of it. “You always have a cheese plate at the ready at ten o’clock at night?”

“You never know who might show up.” Joey popped a cube of cheddar in his mouth. “How long have you been cooking for the stars?”

Penelope swallowed. “Right out of culinary school, so about seven years. I’ve always loved movies and I like that every day is different. Plus, I get to be my own boss.”

“It suits you. You’re out there ordering a bunch of guys around. Like the old days,” he teased.

“Excuse me,” Penelope leaned back on the couch and crossed her arms over her chest, “but did you just call me bossy?”