Death of a Neighborhood Witch (Jaine Austen Mystery) (4 page)

Cryptessa watched as Rosita skittered off, then, not even bothering to lower her voice, declared, “The woman’s robbing me blind. If it’s not nailed down, she steals it.”

Oh, please. Not for one minute did I believe that shy little woman was a thief.

“So whaddaya want?” Cryptessa asked, cutting to the chase with breathless speed.

“I just stopped by to see how you’re coping with the loss of Van Helsing.”

“It’s been hell,” Cryptessa said with a dramatic sweep of her arm. “Sheer hell. Bela and I are positively beside ourselves with grief.”

“Bela?”

“My beloved bat.” With that, she pointed to a hideous stuffed bat I’d failed to notice, who was perched on the mantel. I vaguely recognized it as a prop from her old sitcom.

“They gave me Bela when my show was canceled. You remember my show, don’t you?
I Married a Zombie
.”

“Of course,” I nodded, smiling as if I’d actually watched it.

“I was the fourth most popular monster mom in sitcom history.”

“How wonderful for you.”

“Anyhow, they gave me Bela as a parting gift. Along with my wardrobe and several items of furniture. Well, to be honest, they didn’t exactly give me the furniture. I sneaked it out of the studio in a U-Haul in the middle of the night. But I deserved it, after all the hard work I put in on that damn show. Right, Bela?”

She looked to the bat, as if for affirmation.

Then, turning to me, she whispered, “We’re very close.”

Uh-oh. Somebody call Rod Serling. Looked like I had just entered the
Twilight Zone.

Rosita now returned with Cryptessa’s Coke. She handed it to her quickly, eager to be out of firing range, then shot me a shy smile as she skittered away.

“Don’t even think of taking a Coke for yourself!” Cryptessa shouted after her. “I count them, you know.”

I’m sure she did.

“Yes,” Cryptessa sighed, resuming her role as the grieving parakeet widow, “Bela and I would simply be lost if we didn’t have
The Devil’s Poodle
.”

I looked around, expecting to see a stuffed poodle lurking in the shadows. But no, it turned out that
The Devil’s Poodle
was the title of a book Cryptessa was writing.

“I’ve been working on it for years. Wait here,” she said, hauling herself out of the recliner. “I’ll show you.”

Then she disappeared down the hall, leaving me to chew the fat with Bela. Which, I have to admit, was a pretty one-sided conversation.

Minutes later, Cryptessa came back to the room with a massive tome and plopped it on my lap. Sure enough, the title page read:

The Devil’s Poodle
By Eleanor Jenkins

I could tell from the ragged typeface, the
o
’s flying higher than the other letters, that it had been typed on an old-fashioned manual typewriter.

“You should be honored,” she said. “You’re the only person I’ve ever shown it to. I keep it under lock and key so no one can steal it.”

Paranoid much?

“It’s about a poodle from hell who comes to earth and wreaks death and destruction wherever it goes.”

“Sounds fascinating,” I managed to lie.

“Oh, it is. I’m going to be the next Stephen King. Isn’t that so, Bela?”

Once again, she looked to the bat for confirmation.

“Bela’s so very supportive,” she confided.

Okay, no doubt about it. This was Looney Tunes Central. Time to make my exit.

“I guess I should be getting back to work,” I said.

“Not yet!” Her eyes widened in disappointment. “Not before you’ve had a chance to see my scrapbook.”

And before I knew it, she’d whipped away her future best seller and replaced it with a slim ribbon-bound scrapbook filled with faded clippings from her short-lived TV career.

“That’s me,” she said, pointing out one of the pictures, “in my showbiz debut. As a corpse on
Hawaii Five-0
. The director said I was one of the most believable corpses he’d ever worked with. Here I am as Shopper #2 in a paper towel commercial. And here’s the
Los Angeles Times
review for
I Married a Zombie
. With my name in the headline!” She beamed with pride. “
Eleanor Jenkins Adequate as Cryptessa Muldoon.
”

And as Cryptessa sat there, reliving her past, talking eagerly about how
The Devil’s Poodle
was going to be her ticket back to the limelight, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her—a lonely old dame, living with nothing but her memories and a stuffed bat for company.

No wonder she was so damn cranky.

At last our stroll down memory lane came to an end and I managed to make my escape.

“I’m so sorry about Van Helsing,” I said as she escorted me to the door. “I only wish there were some way I could make it up to you.”

“Oh, I’ll think of something,” she said.

And indeed she would.

Chapter 4

C
ryptessa was pretty much forgotten in the next few days, during what I would soon come to think of as the Peter Wars.

Lance shaped up for combat by spending every available hour at the gym. I, on the other hand, took a somewhat more casual approach, spending several highly productive hours soaking in the tub, daydreaming of my honeymoon as Mrs. Peter Connor.

The Sunday of Peter’s housewarming dawned bright and sunny, and after a hectic morning exfoliating, buffing, moussing, and moisturizing, I got spiffed up in my best elastic-waist jeans and an Eileen Fisher top I’d bought (on sale, of course) especially for the occasion—a charcoal gray scoop neck tunic that gently draped over the dreaded hip/tush zone.

“So what do you think?” I asked Prozac, whirling around for her approval.

Unfortunately she was in the middle of a very important genital exam and could not be bothered to look up.

Leaving her to spend some quality time with her privates, I headed for the kitchen. I’d come up with a brilliant plan to impress Peter, and now was the time to put it in action.

Earlier that morning, I’d zipped over to Mrs. Fields and bought a dozen fudge brownies. Now I nuked the brownies till they had that warm, fresh-from-the-oven smell, and arranged all eleven of them (okay, so I ate one) on a plate with a doily underneath.

Voilà! Home-baked brownies.

I must say, I was quite pleased with myself as I covered the plate with plastic wrap and then headed up the street to Peter’s house.

Our block is a mix of single-family homes and duplexes, the humbler duplexes scattered at the southern end of the street where I live. Peter’s house was one of the upscale single-family residences, an English country Tudor with rustic wood beams adorning the facade.

As I made my way up the path to his front door, I wondered how many people would show up for the housewarming. I wasn’t expecting much of a turnout. When it comes to neighborly spirit, our street is not exactly Wisteria Lane. We do not have block parties or backyard barbeques. Nobody runs next door to borrow a cup of sugar or a dose of Lipitor.

And so I wasn’t surprised when I walked in the open front door and saw just a handful of people sitting in Peter’s living room (a tasteful Techno-Deco affair featuring lots of chrome and black leather, set off in sharp relief against a white flokati rug).

I recognized Helen and Harold Hurlbutt, a middle-aged couple who lived across the street from me and whose high-decibel fights I’d been hearing for years. It was Mrs. Hurlbutt who did most of the yelling, Mr. H jumping in with only an occasional “For cripe’s sake, Helen. Put a sock in it!”

Now they sat on one of two matching leather sofas that flanked a gorgeous brick fireplace, Mr. Hurlbutt loading up on cashews from a bowl of nuts on the coffee table in front of them.

Sitting across from them on the other sofa was an upscale thirtysomething couple from here on the pricier end of the street, whom I’d occasionally seen zooming off to work in their matching His ’n’ Hers BMWs.

Posed primly in an armchair next to them was Cryptessa’s white-haired neighbor, Emmeline Owens.

And rounding out the crew was Lila Wood. Everybody on the block knew Lila, the neighborhood activist, always knocking on our doors with some petition or other to sign.

“I think it’s imperative,” Lila was saying as I stepped into the room, “that we band together to keep our street safe from the hands of rapacious developers.”

The others were nodding in that stupor people tend to fall into when Lila starts yapping.

“Which is why,” she said, “I’m proud to announce I’m running for president of the neighborhood council. And I’m hoping I can count on all your votes.”

The others murmured in tepid assent.

“Jaine!” Peter jumped up at the sight of me, clearly grateful for the interruption, and motioned me over to join the others.

“You know everybody here, don’t you?”

“Not everyone,” I confessed, eyeing the yuppie couple.

“We’re the Moores,” Mr. Yuppie said.

He was a slim, slick guy with designer-cut hair; his wife, a perfect piece of arm candy—cool and blond and packaged to size 2 perfection.

“I’m Matt, and this is my wife, Kevin.”

“Kevin?” I said, gazing at the blond beauty. “What an unusual name for a woman.”

“My mom was expecting a boy,” she explained, “and she wasn’t about to take no for an answer.”

“Like mother, like daughter,” Matt said, putting a proud arm around his wife’s shoulder. “That’s what makes her such a fierce realtor.”

And indeed, in Kevin’s otherwise lovely gray eyes, I could see the icy determination of a street fighter.

“What’s this?” Peter asked, looking down at the plate in my hands.

“I baked you some fudge brownies,” I announced with pride.

“How very thoughtful!” He shot me a smile warm enough to melt the fudge clear off the plate. “They look delicious.”

And so did he, with that amazing cleft in his chin.

Slipping off the plastic wrap, Peter set the brownies down on the coffee table.

“You made these?” Mr. Hurlbutt asked, eyeing them suspiciously.

“Um. Yes,” I said, beginning to sweat just a tad.

“Looks like Mrs. Fields to me,” he said, chomping down on one with gusto.

For a minute I was tempted to confess all and admit that the closest I ever come to baking is heating my undies in the oven when my dryer is busted.

But I decided to hang tough.

“Well, I made them,” I insisted, with as much bravado as I could muster.

“Sit down, won’t you, Jaine?” Peter patted the empty chair next to him, and I slid down into it gratefully.

Still stinging from Mr. Hurlbutt’s accusation, I was relieved to see Matt Moore beaming me a broad smile.

“If you’re looking to buy or sell,” he said, reaching over from the sofa and handing me a business card, “give us a call.”

I glanced down at the card, a glossy affair with the Moores smiling up at me, their whiter-than-white smiles assuring me that they were two of Beverly Hills’ top-selling realtors.

“Actually, I just rent.”

“Oh,” Matt said, his smile fading. “You must live in one of those duplexes down at the end of the street.”

“Yes,” I confessed, “I’m in the renter’s gulag.”

And I couldn’t even afford to live there, if it weren’t for the fact that my duplex has not been updated since the Coolidge administration. My landlord’s helpful motto has always been, “When trouble strikes, any time, day or night—don’t come whining to me.”

It’s funny, I thought as I looked around the room, how Los Angeles real estate made strange bedfellows. People like Emmeline and the Hurlbutts, who’d bought their houses decades ago, could probably never afford to buy them now. And there they were, living side by side with upward strivers like the Moores. And, apparently, Peter. Buying or renting a place like this couldn’t have been cheap.

“These sure taste like Mrs. Fields’s brownies,” Mr. Hurlbutt piped up again.

Jeez, couldn’t he just let it go?

“So, Peter,” I said, eager to get away from the blasted brownies, “what sort of work do you do?”

“Actually, I’m a book editor. Just moved out here from New York.”

“How exciting!” Emmeline’s eyes lit up, impressed. “You’re going to have to meet my granddaughter, Becca. She majored in English in college! You’ll have so much in common. And she’s beautiful, too. She put herself through Stanford by working as a swimsuit model.”

“Hey, can the granddaughter pitch, willya, Emmy? I saw him first.”

Okay, so I didn’t really say that. But I was thinking it as I shoved a brownie in my mouth.

And it was at that moment, just as I was chowing down on Mrs. Fields’s finest, that Lance made his grand entrance.

He told me he’d be coming straight from work, having arranged to get off early from his shift at Neiman’s. But clearly he’d made a pit stop at a tanning parlor. The guy was bronzed to within an inch of his life. Clad in immaculate khakis and a lime-green polo, he looked like he’d just stepped out of a Ralph Lauren photo shoot. In his hand he held the most elaborate white orchid I’d seen this side of a state funeral.

“Hey, Petey,” he said with a tad too much familiarity, “I picked up a little something for your place.”

“It’s beautiful!” Peter said, taking it from Lance.

And indeed, everyone oohed and aahed in agreement as Peter set it on the mantel above his fireplace.

“Have a seat,” he said to Lance, gesturing to one of the sofas.

But Lance ignored his seating suggestion and, eyeing my prized position next to Peter, had the nerve to turn to me and say, “Jaine, hon, why don’t you scoot over to the sofa so you can be closer to the brownies?”

“No thanks,” I replied stonily. “I’m fine here.”

Shooting me a filthy look, he nudged Mrs. Hurlbutt aside so he could take the seat on the sofa closest to Peter’s chair.

“So sorry I’m late,” he said. “Crazy busy at Neiman’s.”

“You work at Neiman Marcus?” Kevin Moore asked, a flicker of interest lighting up her eyes.