A Talent for Murder (29 page)

Polly and Placenta hurried out of the great room and hustled up the Scarlett O’Hara Memorial Staircase. At the second-floor landing, they both rushed toward Polly’s bedroom suite. “I’ll draw the bath!” Placenta called back as she passed Polly in the corridor. “You decide what you want to wear.”

“What I want is a medicinal glass of bubbly!” Polly said as she entered her boudoir and opened the door on her bedside wine cooler. “I’ll take care of the bath. You, open the bottle and lay out my new Dolce, please!”

The two were happy to be engaged in an activity that kept them working together and focused on a mutually agreed upon outcome: turning the lady of the manor into a reasonable facsimile of the Polly Pepper that a generation remembered from her glory days on television. “This is my last time at bat, and I need to be stunning!” Polly said. “Oh, and I want to smell good too. I’ll be on set all day and J.J. said to expect the media to be out in full force covering the meteoric launch of another fifteen seconds of blame, er, fame.”

As a euphoric Polly immersed herself in the bubbles of her Jacuzzi tub, she set her champagne glass among her herbal body oils and lotions on her tub caddy, and
felt herself melt into the fragrant suds. “I pity the poor people,” Polly cooed.

“I don’t see you volunteering to alleviate the suffering on this sick planet,” Placenta grunted.

“I mean, the poor people who aren’t judges on a popular TV reality game show,” Polly said. “If I do well tonight, perhaps when Paula Abdul finally gets her skinny ass off that
American Idol
chair, I’ll be asked to replace her. I mean, everybody in town must know that I survived Thane Cornwall, so I can certainly hold my own with Simon Cowell!”

“Considering that Thane died after one show, I’d say that you survived him only in the same sense that you survived Danny… by him preceding you in death,” Placenta said. She added more champagne to Polly’s glass, and busied herself with straightening the colorful bottles of perfume on the granite-top sideboard that served as a vanity in the vast bathroom. “We’ll see how well you take on Richard Dartmouth tonight.”

Polly splashed in the tub. “After the way ol’ J.J. slaughtered him, Richard’ll probably go for my jugular,” she said, taking another sip from her glass. “However, America loves me, and I’ll come out smelling like the rose that I am.”

“You’re a thorn!”

Polly and Placenta both looked up when they heard Sergeant Sandy’s voice. Sandy stood in the bathroom doorway, pointing a gun at Polly.

“JesusJosephandMary!” Placenta said.

“Forget about roses, you’ll soon smell like fried flesh.” Sergeant Sandy pointed her revolver at Placenta. “Sit!” she barked.

Placenta did as instructed and took a seat on the white leather chaise. “What the hell are you doing? You’re supposed to be protecting us, not robbing us!”

“Robbery?” Sergeant Sandy said, her eyes darting between Polly and Placenta. “I’m not stealing anything. Except a few DVDs—and your lives.”

Polly gasped. “Why? What for? What did we ever do to you?”

“It’s what you
didn’t
do,” Sergeant Sandy said. “You didn’t mind your own business. You had to take those DVDs from Lisa Marrs’s apartment. You beat Ped-Xing and Michael there by mere minutes and ruined all our plans by pinching what you thought were copies of that stupid old movie musical. We—Lisa, Ped, Michael, and me—had everything worked out… until you got in the way.”

Polly clicked her tongue. “I see. You were aware that Steven Benjamin’s sexual proclivities were captured by surveillance cameras, and you were blackmailing him.”

Sergeant Sandy looked at Polly as though she were an idiot. “We weren’t blackmailing Steven Benjamin.”

“But the note?” Polly said.

“Note?” Office Sandy sneered.

Placenta whispered, “Skip it, Polly. There isn’t any note. You’re fantasizing again.”

“Never mind,” Polly said. “It may seem fun to be a megastar like me, but the bright studio lights have a way of melting one’s marbles.”

“Just shut up!” Sergeant Sandy spat. “Where’s the hair dryer?” she asked Placenta.

“We don’t have one,” Placenta said.

“What do you call that thing?” Sergeant Sandy said, and pointed to a handheld hair dryer attached to the wall above the vanity. “Get it! And don’t try anything heroic, or I swear I’ll blast you first. You’re not spoiling
this
plan.”

“What plan?” Placenta asked.

“According to the statement I’ll give to the police, I
caught you after you murdered your boss by electrocution and I had to shoot you in self-defense.”

“No one’ll buy that,” Polly said as she wondered why her knight in shining armor was never around when she needed him. “Placenta and I are best friends. The
National Peeper
even hinted that we’re lovers, which is ridiculous since Jodie Foster is far more my type. That is, if I had a type. I mean, if I liked ladies instead of men, which I actually thought about after my second husband, the asshole, left me. But then I realized that I’d miss a certain accoutrement that nature gave to only one of the sexes. But everybody knows that Placenta and I are devoted to one another. She would never do anything to harm me, nor I her!”

“Shut up!” Sergeant Sandy growled through gritted teeth. “One more word and you’re dead!”

“Isn’t that where all of this is leading anyway?” Polly said. “Before you kill me I want to know what I’m dying for. How does my having those discs of surveillance coverage have anything to do with you?”

Sergeant Sandy looked at Placenta. “Get the hair dryer. Now!”

Placenta moved to the vanity as slowly as possible and unplugged the Conair dryer. She stood with her back to the intruder, but could see her reflection in the mirror.

“What are you waiting for?” Sergeant Sandy huffed. “Let’s get this over with!”

“Placenta, don’t move,” Polly commanded. “Not until we’re told why we have to die.”

Sergeant Sandy shook her head. “For an actress, you don’t take direction very well.” She gave in. “Your time as a living legend is up because I need those discs, and because you know too much. My baby is going to win
I’ll Do Anything to Become Famous
when she proves
that she indeed would—and did—more outrageous things than the others.”

“Your baby?” Polly said. “You’re Taco Bell’s mother?”

“Socorro!” Sergeant Sandy snapped. “Her name is Socorro Sanchez. That bigot, Thane Cornwall, insulted her by nicknaming her after a fast food restaurant.”

“She killed Thane?” Polly said.

“No! She seduced the show’s host!”

“She intentionally slept with Steven Benjamin. In my book that makes her fast food,” Placenta said. “If the burrito fits …”

Polly sniggered and Sergeant Sandy pointed her gun at the star. “I’m sorry,” Polly said as she pulled a meringue of frothy suds toward her breasts. “You do know that Steven slept with all the contestants?”

“I only pretend to be stupid,” Sergeant Sandy said. “Playing the ‘dense as cement’ game helps when I’m working for brain-dead rich people, like the ones at Pepper Plantation. I’ve watched all the discs. Remember? Tonight, when the DVD with Socorro is broadcast—which will demonstrate the lengths she has gone to become famous—she’ll be the winner. To make her victory even more assured, Socorro will explain that after seducing Steven Benjamin, she convinced all the other contestants that if someone had sex with the host they’d have a better chance of winning.”

“And each thought they were the only ones to go through with it,” Polly said.

Placenta forced a weak smile. “Very Hollywood. Everybody screws everybody else to win.”

Polly looked perplexed. “You said that you didn’t know anything about a blackmail letter,” she said to Sandy.

The security guard shrugged. “I’d never put anything in writing. Anyway, we didn’t want anything from
Steven, except the tapes filled with him and Socorro and Ped-Xing and Amy and Miranda and Danny.”

“Talk about ‘reality,’“ Placenta said.

“You used Danny to collect the discs from Pepper Plantation and then you killed him,” Polly said. “As an employee of SOS, you were able to interrupt the alarm system, get Danny into the house to look for the DVDs, and then snuff out his life to keep him quiet.”

“I had nothing to do with Danny’s death,” Sandy insisted. “Yeah, Michael and Danny came here to find the discs, but when they heard someone else in the house, Michael freaked and left Danny alone. Someone else killed him.”

“Did you know that the discs were here before you came to work for us?” Polly asked.

“It was logical,” Sandy said. “Lisa befriended Michael after a particularly nasty day for him with Thane. They got together for drinks to commiserate about their loathsome bosses, and in no time she was yakking about Richard secretly filming the contestants … and judges … in their dressing rooms. Yeah, I know it was part of the reality contest, some sort of bonus for contestants to score extra points if they plotted and schemed and made a big enough noise while backstage. Lisa said that she didn’t have time to put the discs in her bank security deposit box because she was arrested for the murder of Thane Cornwall on a weekend. She told him where to find them. But then you got into her place and took them home with you. Thief.”

“Did you plan to have Michael stay with us?” Polly asked.

“You did that all by your own stupid self,” Sandy said. “We could never have planned a better scenario for getting Michael into your house. If he’d succeeded in absconding with those discs, we wouldn’t be here
today. However, the idiot failed at your dinner party when he lost one in the grass on the estate, then screwed up again when he had full reign of the house.”

“So why isn’t Michael dead like Danny?” Polly asked.

Sergeant Sandy took a deep breath and said, “Let’s just say that he’s no longer living in that hellhole of a rooming house.”

“Poor boy,” Placenta said. “I think he sorta liked Tim—in a big brother way.”

Polly suddenly looked horrified. “Tim! What have you done with Tim?”

“Relax. It’s Friday. Hector the gardener day. Last Friday I noticed that between twelve thirty and two Hector and Tim disappeared into the cottage over by the south end of the estate. They’re having a tea party again—if you get my drift. Too bad he and Placenta plotted against you for their inheritance. Again with the self-defense theme.”

Polly shook her head wildly. “What the hell are you talking about? He would never… You won’t get away with this! Not a single person on the planet, especially our friends, will ever believe you!”

“You should have taken the time to read my daily reports. If you had, you’d have discovered that I kept meticulous notes and quoted long conversations between your son and so-called maid. They planned elaborate ways to get rid of you.” Sandy sighed again. “For crying out loud, I take the time to use my creative writing talents in my daily reports and nobody reads in this house! A shame.”

Sandy pointed to an electrical socket near the Jacuzzi tub. “Time’s up. Plug in the dryer over here. Then turn it on and play catch with your mistress.”

As Sergeant Sandy backed away from the tub for a wider view of the women, Placenta moved forward.

Then she stopped in the middle of the room and turned toward Sandy. “Look, I don’t have to die. I can help you. I’ve wasted the best years of my life working for this drama queen, so I don’t care what you do with her. But I’m not ready to go. I have a full life ahead.”

The expression on Polly’s face turned from fear to injured surprise. “Placenta! We’re best friends.”

“Not if I can escape from this mess that
you
got us into,” Placenta said. Then she turned to Sergeant Sandy again. “You’re not going to get away with this crime unless you either hire a very expensive lawyer, or escape to a country without extradition treaties with the United States, both of which will cost a fortune. I have access to all of Polly’s money. Plus, we have plenty of very wealthy friends abroad.”

For a moment, it seemed that Sergeant Sandy was considering Placenta’s offer. “How much money?” Sandy asked.

“Lots!”

“Nah, Socorro’s win tonight will land us not only that ‘get out of jail free’ card, but a movie deal and endorsements, too.”

“Not when the police begin thinking about how far the lovely and talented Socorro went to win the big prize, and how many real-life bodies you and she scattered around Hollywood,” Polly said. “It won’t take any time at all before they come to the conclusion that a certain mother/ daughter team is responsible for all the killings. And I don’t mean the Judds.”

“Ah, but that’s not true! We had nothing to do with anyone’s death—except yours! Thane and Danny aren’t our problem!”

“Unless they first discover that you were the mastermind behind my death, and Placenta’s and Tim’s. Then
the police will accuse you of killing Thane and Danny,” Polly said.

Sandy looked as though she hadn’t considered that scenario. “Don’t forget the grand prize, the ‘get out of jail free’ card!” Sandy stuttered.

“One card. One crime. No felonies,” Placenta said. “And it’s Socorro’s card, not yours.”

The color drained from Sandy’s face. She stood frozen for a long moment, then pointed her gun directly at Placenta’s chest. “Stop it! I’m tired of you and the so-called legendary Polly Pepper getting in the way of things! Plug in the goddamned hair dryer. Now!”

Shaken, she plugged it in and stood motionless.

In a softer voice, Sandy said, “Turn the switch on.”

Placenta looked helplessly at Polly. “I wasn’t serious a moment ago when I said that I’d wasted the best years of my life with you. I was born into a horrible life, just like you, and I actually got to escape my destiny all because you liked me. I’ll thank you again when I see you in heaven. I know that St. Peter will let you in.”

“And you, too, Placenta,” Polly said with tears in her eyes. “You were a sassy ol’ thing, but we were a terrific team. At least we won’t be seeing the likes of this bitch inside the Pearly Gates. I’ll be sure to tell St. Peter all about how she treated us. And Timmy will be along to join us. Hey, I’ll have that immortality that every celebrity who dies young receives. I’ll probably surpass Elvis for the most Polly Pepper sightings! But damn, I always wanted a Kennedy Center honor!”