Death of a Neighborhood Witch (Jaine Austen Mystery) (11 page)

Another attorney would be nice.

“No, thanks, I’m fine.”

“Lance tells me you’re in trouble with the police.”

“I’m afraid they think I may have murdered Cryptessa—I mean, Eleanor Jenkins.”

“What makes you say that?”

I told him the whole story, about leaving my ape suit on Peter’s bed and getting trapped in the Tummy Tamer and then finding out that Cryptessa had been killed by someone in an ape suit.

As I talked, Raoul nodded sympathetically, taking copious notes.

A ray of hope began to glimmer on the horizon. Maybe this guy knew his stuff after all.

When I was through, he put down his Erotica Massage ballpoint pen and shot me a confident smile.

“Have no fear, Jaine. I think we have a lawsuit here.”

“A lawsuit?”

“Yes!” He jumped up and grabbed a neck brace from the pile in the corner. “When you were struggling out of that Tummy Tamer, I bet you sprained your neck. We’ll sue those bastards for all they’re worth!”

“But what about the murder charge?”

“Oh, that,” he said with an airy wave of his hand. “I’ll think of something to get you off the hook.”

This guy had to be kidding.

“Are you actually licensed to practice law?” I finally had the guts to ask.

“In Guatemala, yes.”

“But we’re in Los Angeles now.”

“What the judge doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” he replied with a throaty chuckle. “Now, c’mon. Let’s get you fitted for that brace.”

Needless to say, I did not take Raoul’s neck brace. Or his business card. Or his $10 Off coupon for an Erotica Massage.

What a colossal waste of time this had been, I thought as I stomped back to my Corolla. Raoul Duvernois would be as much help to me in court as a zit on prom night.

Heading home, I turned on the radio, checking the news stations for stories on Cryptessa’s murder. But all I heard was chatter about a fire in El Segundo, a robbery in Bel Air, and the Scandal du Jour at City Hall.

I’d been afraid Cryptessa’s murder would be splashed all over the newspapers that morning—a front-page story with my ghastly driver’s license photo beneath the headline:

F
REELANCE
W
RITER
G
OES
B
ERSERK
,
K
ILLS
A
GGRAVATING
N
EIGHBOR

But stuck as she was at the bottom of the Hollywood food chain, Cryptessa did not rate page one coverage. The story of her murder had been tucked away on page five of the metro section. Just a few sentences about how former sitcom actress Eleanor Jenkins had been stabbed outside her home by an assailant in a gorilla costume.

According to the story, the police were following several leads and were asking anyone with information about the identity of the assailant to contact Detective Brian Casey of the Beverly Hills Police Department.

Thank heavens there’d been no mention of
moi
.

But that still didn’t mean I was off the hook. Far from it.

I remembered that fishy glare Detective Casey had lobbed me when he warned me not to leave town.

I was a hot suspect, all right. And I certainly could not depend on Raoul, my Franco-Guatemalan ambulance chaser, to clear my name.

It looked like I’d just have to do a little investigating on my own.

(You should know that I’ve solved a bunch of homicides in my day—stirring sagas of murder, mayhem, and Chunky Monkey binges. All of which you can read about in the titles listed at the front of this book.)

As I told Lance, I’d pretty much ruled out Peter’s friends and coworkers as suspects. Which left the small band of neighbors who’d shown up at the Halloween party. All of them had grudges against the former sitcom zombie. All of them had witnessed my blowup with her at Peter’s housewarming. And all of them had access to my ape suit.

So which one of them decided to take advantage of my fight with Cryptessa to frame me for her murder?

I decided to start my investigation with the Hurlbutts.

Hadn’t Mrs. Hurlbutt been the one who raced into Peter’s house with the news of Cryptessa’s murder? What had she been doing outside anyway? Driving a stake in Cryptessa’s heart, perchance?

After a pit stop at my apartment for a pizza bagel and minced mackerel guts (the mackerel guts were for Prozac—and so was a good chunk of the pizza bagel), I headed across the street and rang the Hurlbutts’ bell.

Mrs. Hurlbutt came to the door in a turquoise jogging suit, her impossibly red hair sprayed into a stiff
Here’s Lucy
bob.

Her eyes widened in surprise at the sight of me.

“Jaine, what are you doing here? You out on bail?”

“No, I’m not out on bail. I was never arrested.”

“But I saw the cops taking you away last night.”

“They just wanted to ask me a few questions, and then they let me go.”

“Oh.”

It was clear from her tone of voice she thought the cops had made a major mistake.

“Well?” she said, making no move to invite me in.

“I was hoping I could talk to you and Mr. Hurlbutt for a few minutes.”

“All right,” she said, grudgingly. “But we were just in the middle of lunch, and I don’t have enough for you.”

Emily Post, eat your heart out.

I followed her into her 1970s kitchen with its avocado-green appliances and a dishtowel from the Grand Canyon hanging from the oven door.

Mr. H. was seated at a table for two in the corner, eating what looked like a most delicious tuna noodle casserole. A huge dish of the stuff sat in the center of the table.

Mrs. Hurlbutt plopped down across from him, leaving me standing there.

“Can I get you a seat?” Mr. Hurlbutt had the decency to ask.

“No, Harold,” Mrs. H. decreed. “She’s just staying a few minutes.”

I must have been staring at his casserole because Mr. Hurlbutt then asked, “You want some?”

Mrs. Hurlbutt shot him a withering glare.

“If we give her some, we won’t have enough for lunch tomorrow, and I want it to last two days.”

“Really, that’s okay.” I smiled a smile meant exclusively for Mr. Hurlbutt. “I’m fine.”

“So what did you want to talk about?” Mrs. Hurlbutt asked.

“Cryptessa’s murder.”

“If you ask me,” Mrs. Hurlbutt said with a righteous sniff, “it’s karma. Payback for Cryptessa killing my tulips.”

The scary thing is she meant it. She actually thought that tulip-o-cide was grounds for capital punishment. Which made me wonder once again if Mrs. H. was indeed the killer.

I suddenly flashed on the day I was cleaning my car and saw Mrs. H. stabbing the slugs in her garden. How ferociously she’d gone at them with her hoe. All because they’d had the temerity to invade her flower bed. Had she gone after Cryptessa in a similar rage?

“I’m afraid the police think I did it,” I said.

“Did you?” she asked, with her usual sledgehammer tact.

“Of course not!”

“I told you she didn’t do it,” Mr. H. piped up.

“That’s the trouble with you, Harold. You always think the best of people.”

“Last night at the party,” I said, wrenching the conversation back on topic, “I left my ape suit on Peter’s bed, and someone else wore it to kill Cryptessa.”

“So that’s your story, huh?” Mrs. H. smirked, oozing skepticism.

It was all I could do not to shove that tuna noodle casserole up her wazoo.

“Anyhow, I was wondering if either of you saw anybody going into the hallway to Peter’s bedroom?”

“Yes, of course,” Mrs. H. said, scooping up a forkful of casserole. “I saw you. You hightailed it there right after you saddled us with that gasbag Lila Wood. Which I didn’t appreciate one little bit, I don’t mind saying.”

“Did you see anyone aside from me go down the hallway?”

“No, it was hard to see much with Lila yapping in my face.”

“What about you, Mr. Hurlbutt?”

But Mrs. Hurlbutt cut him off before he could get a word in.

“Harold, the traitor, ran off to the buffet and left me stranded with Lila. Said he’d be right back with some cold cuts, but that was the last I saw of him until after Cryptessa was murdered.”

Very interesting. So the Hurlbutts had been separated. Which meant that either one of them could have slipped away to kill Cryptessa.

“I told you I got caught up in a conversation with Matt Moore,” Mr. Hurlbutt said, blushing a deep red. “And no,” he added, turning to me, “I didn’t see anyone go down the hallway. Aside from you, that is.”

“Can you two think of anyone—
other than me
—who might have killed Cryptessa?”

“If I had to guess,” Mrs. Hurlbutt said, “I’d say Emmeline Owens. She hated Cryptessa with a passion, ever since Cryptessa threw that lemon at her dog.”

“But Emmeline couldn’t have done it,” Mr. Hurlbutt said.

“She wasn’t even at Peter’s party. How would she have gotten hold of Jaine’s ape suit?”

“Oh, Harold. You’re so naïve. Who’s to say the killer was even wearing an ape suit?”

Mrs. H. was right of course. We only had Emmeline’s word for that. For all we knew, Emmeline could have made up that whole ape suit story to save her own fanny.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Hurlbutt, nodding, “the killer could very well be Emmeline Owens. Isn’t that right, Harold?”

She turned and shot him a look of such steely intensity I thought she’d drill a hole through his skull.

“Right, dear,” Mr. H. nodded, squirming in his seat. Beads of sweat had broken out along his brow, and glancing down, I saw he’d torn his paper napkin into tiny shreds.

Mr. Hurlbutt was clearly not a happy camper.

Was it because he knew Cryptessa’s killer was his own wife?

Or, worse, because he’d done the dirty deed himself?

Chapter 11

I
had a hard time believing Emmeline was the killer—mainly because she weighed about ninety-two pounds soaking wet. I doubted she had the strength to open a pickle jar, let alone plunge a stake in Cryptessa’s heart.

And yet Cryptessa had hurled a lethal lemon at her beloved Lana Turner. Surely that might be a motive for murder. What’s more, I remembered how furious Emmeline had been when she’d accused Cryptessa of eating her birthday chocolates. She certainly seemed ready to kill her then.

So I decided to pop by her house and question her. At the very least, maybe I could pick up some leads.

Unlike Mrs. Hurlbutt, Emmeline welcomed me with open arms.

“Why, Jaine! How lovely to see you!”

She stood there in the doorway, a china doll in a gingham Capri set, her silvery hair framing her face in a Dutch bob.

“What perfect timing!” she cried. “I just took a batch of sugar cookies from the oven.”

Indeed I could smell the heavenly aroma of vanilla wafting through the house.

She led the way to her living room, a white wicker-and-chintz affair, replete with tiny footstools and silk flowers sprouting from teapots—all very Tea Time at Laura Ashley’s.

Dominating the room was a large oil portrait hanging over the fireplace. In it, a much younger Emmeline sat alongside a handsome Tyrone Poweresque man.

“That’s me and my dear, departed husband, Xavier,” Emmeline said, following my gaze.

“You make a beautiful couple.”

“Thank you,” she said, her eyes lingering on her handsome husband. “Xavier was the love of my life.”

At which point, the ball of white fur that had been snoring on the sofa sprang to attention and gave a petulant yip.

“Aside from you, Lana, darling!” Emmeline hastened to assure her bichon. “You’re the love of my life, too.”

Having mollified Lana, she turned her attention back to me.

“Make yourself comfortable, Jaine,” she said, waving me to a hibiscus-covered armchair, “while I fix us some tea.”

“Let me help.”

“No, no. You just stay here and make friends with Lana Turner.”

With that, she picked up the dog and dumped it in my lap.

“Don’t worry,” she trilled as she trotted off. “She hardly ever bites.”

Alone with the dog, I smiled feebly.

Lana growled in return, baring a set of rather frightening little fangs.

“Nice doggie!” I simpered, wondering if rabies shots were as painful as people said.

Then, to my surprise, she rolled over in my lap and offered me her belly.

Tentatively I reached down to pet her, hoping I wasn’t about to lose a finger or two. I needn’t have worried. With the first stroke, she gave a moan of doggie ecstasy.

It took Emmeline a good ten minutes to rustle up that tea, every second of which I spent stroking Lana. If I dared to stop, she bared her teeth and growled at me most unpleasantly, Cujo with a hair bow.

At last, just as carpal tunnel syndrome was about to set in, Emmeline came trotting back with the tea and cookies and swooped Lana from my lap, relieving me of belly rub duty.

“Have a cookie, dear!” she urged, nodding at a plate of golden, sugar-dusted cookies.

I was more than happy to oblige.

One luscious, buttery bite and my aching wrist was quickly forgotten.

I happily chomped it down and reached for another.

It felt good to break away from chocolate for a change and give other calories a chance to frolic on my hips.

I was having such a good time ingesting empty calories that I almost forgot why I’d stopped by. Until Emmeline, smiling brightly, said:

“So you’re out of jail already! I knew you couldn’t have killed Cryptessa.”

I did not bother to correct her. Clearly Mrs. H. had been working overtime, spreading the word about my “arrest” to anyone with half an earlobe.

“If you ask me,” Emmeline said, feeding a morsel of cookie to Lana, “the killer is Helen Hurlbutt.”

I wisely refrained from mentioning that Mrs. Hurlbutt had just been saying the same thing about her.

“Helen went absolutely crazy when she thought Cryptessa poisoned her tulips. Came tearing over to her house, screaming bloody murder. I couldn’t help overhearing, of course.”