Death of a Trophy Wife (8 page)

B
ack in the living room, I groaned to see Marvin and Owen still going at it hot and heavy. But by now I’d run out of patience. Enough was enough. I marched over to the fireplace, gathering my courage to interrupt them.

And I was just about to break up their little duo when Bunny beat me to it.

“What the hell is
he
doing here?” she hissed at Marvin.

She pointed to the doorway, where Lenny, the sad-eyed salesman, had just wandered in.

“It’s no big deal,” Marvin said, with a placating smile. “I asked him to stop by.”

“No big deal?” Bunny fumed. “First that Austen creature. And now Lenny. What do you think this is?
My Life on the D List
?”

“Lenny happens to be my best friend,” Marvin said, allowing a hint of irritation to creep into his voice.

“Not anymore, he’s not,” Bunny snapped. “Not if I have anything to do with it.”

And with that she sashayed back to Lance.

“C’mon, sweetie,” she said, grabbing her Marilyn Monroe glass and taking a healthy slug. “Let’s get some fresh air.”

Marvin watched unhappily as, martini in hand, Bunny steered Lance out onto the patio.

And I took advantage of the lull in the conversation to make my move.

“Excuse me, Mr. Cooper.”

“Oh, Jaine,” he said, turning to see me for the first time. “How long have you been standing here?”

Clearly he was worried I’d heard Bunny call me “that Austen creature.”

“Not long at all,” I lied. “I thought maybe I could pitch my slogans to you.”

“Of course, of course. I’ll be with you in a minute. Owen and I are just wrapping things up.”

Forcing a smile, I left them alone and resumed my role as the Party Pariah. I spent the next twenty minutes standing around, inhaling hors d’oeuvres, ignored by one and all.

Finally Fiona took pity on me and came over to talk.

“Jaine,” she cooed. “How lovely to see you!”

Quite the dramatic figure she was, just a scarf away from Isadora Duncan in wide palazzo pants and a flowy silk tunic.

“Don’t mind Bunny,” she said, with a sympathetic smile. “She’s an equal opportunity insulter. She says the most atrocious things about everyone.”

Great. How nice to know that the entire party heard her refer to me as “that Austen creature.”

“By the way,” she added, “adore your outfit. Old Navy puts out such clever fashions.”

If I wasn’t mistaken, that was a bit of a dig. But at this point, thanks to my dirty martini, I didn’t much care. Yes, somewhere along the line, I’d lost track of my sips and polished off the whole darn drink.

It was with dismay that I now looked down into my martini glass and discovered that, aside from an olive skewer, it was totally empty. How could I have been stupid enough to get tootled right before a presentation?

And there was no doubt about it. I was a bit tootled. I realized this when I found myself giggling at Fiona’s Old Navy crack.

I excused myself and hurried off to the guest bathroom to splash some cold water on my face. A charming little sanctuary straight out of a Beatrix Potter tale, the room was done up in a bunny theme, with faucets and guest soaps shaped like the furry critters.

Wasting no time, I started splashing. The cold water was bracing, and after a while, I felt the fuzz in my brain begin to dissipate.

Then I patted my face dry with one of Bunny’s fine Irish linen guest towels, embroidered with yet more bunnies.

(Where was Elmer Fudd when you needed him?)

While I was there I figured I might as well do a final prep for my presentation, so I whipped out my slogans from my purse and went over them one last time.

With confidence fully restored, I checked out my reflection in the mirror and slapped on some lipstick.

And then I did something I would sorely live to regret. I snooped in the medicine cabinet. Yes, I confess. I am a confirmed medicine cabinet snooper. I’ve tried to quit many times, but the lure is always too great to resist.

Not that I expected to find anything juicy in the guest bathroom. I mean, all the serious stuff, like the Grecian Formula and Preparation H, would be upstairs in the master bath. But a snoop can dream, can’t she?

All I found was a bottle of aspirin, a box of Q-tips, and a jar of hand cream. Nothing you’d read about in the
Enquirer
. The hand cream, however, wasn’t your everyday Jergens. It was the zillion-dollar-an-ounce kind of stuff you see in the glossy pages of
Vogue.

I opened it and took a sniff. Mmmm. Heavenly.

Now, if Bunny had wanted guests to use it, she would have put it out on her travertine marble counter along with her bunny guest soaps. This was obviously primo, Grade A hand cream, reserved for Her Royal Bitchiness.

Which meant, of course, that I had to try it. Still smarting over her earlier insults, I slathered it on with abandon.

And that was my second big mistake.

Lord knows what mysterious stuff that hand cream was made of. Probably the embryo of some hapless endangered species. Whatever it was, it was darn slippery. When I started to put it back in the medicine cabinet, my hands were so slick, the bottle slipped from my grasp and crashed onto the tile floor.

Oh, hell. I stared in dismay at the goo at my feet.

I searched under the sink for something to clean it up with. But there was nothing. The only thing at my disposal were the bunny guest towels. I couldn’t possibly use those. So minutes later I was on my hands and knees scraping the stuff up with toilet paper.

Unwilling to leave behind any incriminating evidence, I dumped it all into my purse. Somehow I managed to cram the whole mess in. At last I finished, and, wiping the sweat from my brow, I unlocked the door and headed out into the hallway.

I hadn’t gone very far when I realized I’d forgotten my slogans. I hurried back to the bathroom, and sure enough, they were right where I left them on the counter. So I dashed over to get them.

And that’s when my luck went from bad to unthinkably bad.

As much as I’d tried to clean up the goo, I had apparently not gotten it all. The floor still had a few slick spots. One of which I proceeded to step in.
Oh, no!
Suddenly I felt myself about to take a tumble.

Frantically I grabbed the towel rack for support and gasped in horror as it came flying out of the wall.

Then, like a scene from my own personal disaster movie, I watched as the towel rack slammed into the medicine cabinet mirror with a godawful crash, and then—my seven years of bad luck off to a booming start—whacked one of the bunny faucets loose.

Glass scattered everywhere. And worse, infinitely worse, water gushed wildly from the space where the faucet used to be.

Quel nightmare!

I grabbed one of the bunny guest towels and desperately tried to staunch the flow of gushing water.

So busy was I that I did not hear the sound of approaching footsteps thundering down the hallway.

Suddenly the door burst open.

“What the hell is going on here?”

I looked up to see Bunny standing in the doorway, the other guests huddled behind her, taking in the show.

“Hey!” one of them shouted. “That’s the woman who stole my mattress sample!”

Oh, crud. It was Carlton!

“Look, I can explain about that—”

“Who cares about a goddamn mattress sample,” Bunny shrieked, “when my bathroom is flooded?”

“You!” She snapped her fingers at the actor/bartender, who’d abandoned his post to catch the action. “Shut off the water valve under the sink.”

The water valve under the sink! Why hadn’t I thought of that?

“And when you’re finished, get a mop from the kitchen and clean up the mess.”

“I’ll help,” I offered, hating to see the poor guy saddled with something I was responsible for.

“Don’t you dare touch a thing!” Bunny screeched. “I want to save what little of my bathroom I have left.”

With that, she stormed out to the living room, trailed by her wide-eyed guests, all eager to catch the next act of this exciting drama.

“Jaine, honey, are you okay?”

I turned to see Lance by my side.

“Oh, Lance,” I wailed, as he put a comforting arm around my shoulder. “It was so awful. All I did was rub on a little hand cream and the next thing I knew the bathroom was in shambles.”

A pathetic little tear, I’m ashamed to admit, made its way down my cheek.

Now Lance may give me a rough time when it comes to my fashion choices, but when it comes to being a friend, he’s always there for me. Well, almost always. Okay, a lot of times, anyway. And this was one of those times.

“C’mon,” he said. “Let’s go home. I’ve had enough of Bunny and her stupid party. The more I see of that woman, the less I like her.”

“Okay, but I’d better apologize first. After all, I did just destroy her bathroom.”

I found Bunny in the living room, surrounded by a bevy of Barbies, tsk-tsking in sympathy.

“I know just what you’re going through,” one of them was commiserating. “Why, just the other day the speakers in our media room blew out. It was devastating, simply devastating.”

Not surprisingly, this touching anecdote failed to comfort Bunny in her time of need.

“I need a drink,” she announced. “Lupe! Get me my martini from the patio!”

Lupe, who’d been hovering at the edge of the crowd, jumped to attention and skittered out to the patio.

My cue to face the dragon lady. I took a deep breath and walked up to her.

“Are you still here?” she snapped.

I swear, if she’d had a flyswatter, she would’ve used it on me.

“I just want to tell you how very sorry I am, Bunny, and let you know I’ll be happy to reimburse you for whatever damage I caused.”

“Hah!” she snorted. “You couldn’t afford to reimburse me for a guest towel.”

She was right about that.

“There’s no need to reimburse us, Jaine,” Marvin piped up. “It was an accident; it could’ve happened to anyone.”

“An accident?” Bunny shrieked. “Are you kidding? The woman is a walking catastrophe!”

“No,” a bitter voice called from over by the fireplace. “You’re the catastrophe, Bunny.”

All eyes riveted to Sarah, who now came weaving over to Bunny, drink in hand.

Ellen looked over at her daughter in alarm.

“Sweetheart,” she said, taking Sarah gently by the elbow, “I think maybe you’ve had a bit too much to drink.”

“Of course I have, Mom. How else do you think I can stand to be in the same room with her?”

Then, brushing her mother aside, she resumed her critique of Bunny.

“You’re a vain, venal, vicious bitch,” she hissed. “And those are your
good
qualities. My god, Bunny, you make Lucrezia Borgia look like Mother Teresa.”

Next to me, I heard one of the Barbies whisper, “Who’s Lucrezia Borgia?”

“I’m not sure,” her pal replied. “I think she’s on
Desperate Housewives
.”

Bunny, meanwhile, unused to having her character traits so accurately summed up, was fuming.

“Go to hell, Sarah!”

“After one of your parties, that can only be an improvement.”

“Lupe!” Bunny screeched, now flushed with rage. “Where’s my goddamn martini?”

At last Lupe came racing in from the patio with Bunny’s prized Marilyn Monroe glass.

“It’s about time,” Bunny said, polishing off the drink in a single gulp. “What took you so long?”

But Lupe never got a chance to reply, because it was around about then that Bunny began keeling over in pain.

“Omigod!” Ellen cried. “She’s having a heart attack! Somebody call 911!”

“It’s not a heart attack,” one of the Barbies called out. “It’s food poisoning. Those Brie balls tasted funny to me.”

“Me, too,” seconded another. “It’s a good thing I threw mine up.”

“This can’t be happening,” Fiona gasped. “Not to Bunny.”

I, too, blinked in disbelief as the seemingly indestructible Bunny crumpled to her knees.

“It’s not my fault!” Lupe wailed.

“Bunny, darling,” Marvin cried, kneeling at her side. “What’s wrong?”

What was wrong, as it turned out, was the fatal dose of weed killer someone had slipped in Bunny’s martini.

But we didn’t know that then.

All we knew then was that she’d stopped breathing.

By the time the ambulance showed up, she was dead as last year’s fashions.

T
he media called it The Dirty Martini Murder.

Traces of cyanide had been found in both Bunny’s stomach and her martini glass. The same kind of cyanide commonly found in weed killer.

Bunny’s drink was fine before she left for the patio with Lance. I’d seen her drink from it. So the way I figured it, whoever did it must’ve slipped the poison in Bunny’s martini while everyone was huddled around the guest bathroom gawking at me in The Great Guest Bathroom Fiasco.

It would have been easy enough to do. The weed killer was right there on the patio where the gardener had left it. Ready for the taking. And after that scene Bunny made with Lupe over her Marilyn Monroe glass, everyone at the party knew exactly which glass she’d been drinking from. How ironic. If only she hadn’t been so insistent on drinking out of that damn glass, she might never have been killed. Not that night, anyway.

Naturally, I was overwhelmed with grief. Not over Bunny’s death. I was sorry she was dead, of course, but it was hard to work up any real tears over such a dreadful woman.

No, the death I was mourning was the Mattress King account. Marvin would never hire me now, not after the havoc I’d wreaked in his guest bathroom.

It was back to toilet bowl ads for moi.

I was sitting on my sofa a few days later, eating peanut butter—one of nature’s most comforting comfort foods—straight from the jar. Prozac was sprawled out beside me, staring fixedly at her genitals, enjoying a brief siesta between naps.

“Oh, Pro,” I sighed. “It would’ve been so nice to get that account.”

Tearing her gaze away from her privates, she looked up at me with big green eyes that seemed to say:

Can I try some of that peanut butter?

This tender moment was interrupted by a loud pounding at my front door.

I got up to answer it and found Lance, breathless with excitement.

“Big news!”

“What?”

But he was not about to tell me.

“What are you eating?” he asked, catching sight of my Skippy jar.

Uh-oh. I felt a lecture coming on.

“Peanut butter. Extra chunky.”

“For breakfast?” A tsk of disapproval.

“Yes. I was all out of cold pizza.”

“Very amusing. But don’t come whining to me when you can’t fit into anything except elastic-waist pants.”

What did I tell you? A lecture.

“Lance, I happen to like my elastic-waist pants. You’re the only one who whines about them. Now are we are going to stand around discussing my eating habits, or are you going to tell me your news?”

“Oh, right,” he said, plopping down on my sofa. “I just heard it on the radio. The cops have someone they want to bring in for questioning in Bunny’s murder.”

“Who?”

“They didn’t say. But my money’s on Lupe. She probably did it when she went to get Bunny her drink.”

My heart sank at the thought of poor little Lupe being hauled off to jail.

“I don’t know, Lance. I just can’t picture Lupe as a killer. The woman is afraid of her own shadow.”

“Okay, then. What about Sarah? She detested Bunny. Remember that scene she made at the party? Frankly, I’m surprised she didn’t strangle her right then and there.”

It turned out it was neither Lupe nor Sarah. As we were about to discover not three seconds later when there was another knock on my door.

I opened it to find two guys in shiny suits standing on my doorstep.

“May I help you?” I smiled.

“Yes, ma’am,” replied one of them, a hulking bear of a guy, his gut just a millimeter away from popping a suit button.

He whipped out a badge from his wallet and introduced himself.

“Detective Perlmutter, L.A.P.D.”

Omigod!
I
was the one they were bringing in for questioning!

I was speechless. Part of it was the peanut butter stuck to the roof of my mouth, but most of it was sheer terror. The cops must’ve heard how I’d wrecked Bunny’s bathroom. Maybe they thought that I’d done it on purpose, that I was her enemy, out to annihilate not only her bathroom fixtures, but Bunny herself!

“I swear I didn’t do it!” I wailed, regaining my powers of speech. “I couldn’t have! I was in the bathroom the entire time Bunny’s drink was out on the patio! You can’t possibly suspect
me
.”

“Don’t worry, Jaine.” Lance hurried to my side. “I’ll get you the best attorney money can buy. I know a real barracuda, the guy who sued my chiropractor. We’ll take this thing all the way to the Supreme Court, if need be.”

“I’d hold that call to the Supreme Court if I were you,” Detective Perlmutter advised. “We’re not accusing you of anything, ma’am. Who are you, anyway?”

“You don’t know?” I blinked, puzzled.

“I think her name is Jaine Austen, Frank.”

Perlmutter’s partner, an only marginally thinner version of Perlmutter, checked a list of names on a clipboard.

“She’s on the guest list. The one who broke the bathroom sink.”

“I did not break the sink! I broke the faucet. And the mirror. And a jar of hand cream. But that’s all. And I swear, I didn’t kill anyone!”

“Okay, okay. Calm down. We’re looking for your neighbor. Lance Venable.”

Next to me, Lance gasped.

“We just rang his bell, but he’s not in. He hasn’t left town, has he?”

I shook my head.

“Do you have any idea where he is?”

“I’m Lance Venable,” Lance squeaked.

“We have a few questions we’d like to ask you.”

“No problem, fellas,” Lance said, pasting on a phony smile. “But right now I’m late for my Pilates class. Can we do this another time? Say next week? Why don’t you give me your card and I’ll give you a buzz.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible, sir.”

The two detectives stood shoulder to shoulder, like twin rottweilers, blocking any possible escape.

“We need you to come with us to headquarters now.”

I stood there, speechless, as they carted him away.

Needless to say, I was beyond stunned. Why on earth were the cops interested in Lance? He had zero motive to kill Bunny. After all, she’d been one of his most valued customers at Neiman’s.

I got my answer when he staggered back to my apartment later that morning.

“You’re not going to believe this,” he said, slouching in my armchair, his normally tight blond curls wilted under the morning’s stress. “Bunny left me her Maserati in her will. Apparently it’s worth a hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars.”

Let’s all pause for a moment of righteous indignation, shall we, at the thought of anyone spending a hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars on a car when certain people were starving in Africa and certain other people’s orange walls needed desperately to be painted.

“The cops think I killed her to get my hands on the car.”

“But you didn’t even know she’d left it to you.”

“That’s what I told them,” he sighed. “But I don’t think they believed me.”

“Surely she left money to other people in her will.”

“Not really. She had no money of her own. It was all in Marvin’s name. All she owned of value was that car. And I got it.”

He slouched down farther in the chair.

“And it just gets worse. Apparently someone at the party saw me stay out on the patio after Bunny came inside.”

I gulped in dismay.

“You were alone out on the balcony with her drink?”

“I needed some peace and quiet. A little bit of Bunny goes a long way. I only stayed outside a minute or two. And I swear, I didn’t touch that drink.”

“Of course you didn’t.”

“Oh, Jaine,” he moaned, raking his fingers through his hair. “They’re going to arrest me. I can just feel it. I don’t want to go to jail for a crime I didn’t commit!

“I know!” he exclaimed, jumping up. “I’ll grab a plane to Bora Bora and hide out in the jungle. Assuming they have jungles in Bora Bora. I can live off the fruit of the land. I’ve always wanted to live in the South Pacific. The weather’s nice and hot. And so are the guys. So what if I’m ten thousand miles from the nearest Barney’s? I’ll adjust.”

“Lance, don’t you think you’re overreacting just a tad?”

“You’re right. I can’t go running all the way to Bora Bora. That’s crazy. I’ll hide out closer to home. In the Amazon. Just me and the alligators. They’ll never find me there!”

“Lance! Get a grip! Just because the police brought you in for questioning doesn’t mean they’re going to arrest you! I’m sure they’re going to be questioning lots of people before this is all over.”

“You think so?”

“I know so,” I said, knowing no such thing. “In the meanwhile, why don’t I snoop around and see if I can come up with any juicy suspects?”

For those of you who don’t already know, snooping around and finding juicy suspects happens to be a hobby of mine. A dangerous one, to be sure, right up there with bungee jumping and bikini waxing. But it’s something to keep me occupied between toilet bowl ads.

“Oh, Jaine,” Lance said, a faint ray of hope shining in his eyes. “You are such a doll. I promise I will never lecture you about calories or clothing ever again.”

Poor guy had such a rough morning, I pretended to believe him.