Authors: Jerrilyn Farmer
Perfect Sax (29 page)
That semen stain on my backseat. I laughed out loud. Good luck to the LAPD crime lab on matching that sample.
And then it all suddenly struck me. Standing out in the cul-de-sac at night with Nelson Piffer and his sweet Teuksbury, I got a glimpse of the impossible challenge of my need to problem-solve, made simple and clear and hopeful for a brief second. Like a pile of a thousand spiky pieces that might make up several finished jigsaw puzzles, it’s anyone’s guess most of the time which pieces in life fit into any given puzzle. The key to order was proper sorting.
And over the past few months I’d watched so many jigsaw pieces pile up: the trash left on my doorstep, the disappearance of a priceless saxophone, the theft of three etchings, the death of a waitress, the murder of a music teacher, and add another piece named Dexter Wyatt, and then another named Chuck Honnett—all needing proper sorting before any puzzles could be solved.
It was my nature to tackle that pile, impossible though it might seem, but what made it worthwhile was an instant like this: this rare and sudden joy—this one sharp, simple moment of seeing the puzzles truly sorted out. The deaths, the thefts, the men…and even the mysterious stain on the backseat of my old car.
An hour later, I was back at Wesley’s place. What had followed that gleeful moment of clarity—the belief I finally
got
it—was the natural onset of gloom over all the things I, in fact,
didn’t
get. I had come no closer, for instance, to understanding my own heart. I couldn’t even sort out what feelings I still had for Chuck Honnett. Even though I was over my anger and my hurt. Even after he said he loved me. Still, we could never erase what had happened. He hadn’t trusted me. I hadn’t trusted him. I had shot his wife. How could we move forward? It was too damned complicated.
At the guest house, I found a large manila envelope leaning up against the door. It said
TO MADELINE
on the front. It must have been hand-delivered because there was no postage attached or even a full address.
As I let myself in, I began to rip open the envelope.
“What’s that?” Wes asked, looking up as I entered the door.
I pulled out the contents and showed them to Wesley. In my hands were a dozen black-and-white photographs, size eight-by-ten. They were amazingly well focused and beautifully composed. The subject of one of the photos was Serena Williams as she accepted a special award at the U.S. Open in New York. Other photos were candids of the tennis star and others on the court swinging rackets, and backstage at the awards, and at the after party. A note slipped out, attached by paper clip to a ticket.
Wesley looked even more curious.
“It’s from Dexter,” I said, reading the note. “He sold two of his pictures to
Sports Illustrated.
”
“You have got to be kidding!”
“Isn’t that great? He says they are asking him to shoot some stuff in color in Bangkok in a few weeks, an international tennis tournament. He sent me a ticket. Said he’d like me to come.”
“Oh, Mad.”
“Oh, Wes.” We both stood there shaking our heads. “It’s a lucky thing that men do not tempt me anymore.”
“Well, that
is
a lucky thing,” Wes said. “I hadn’t heard that news yet.”
“Late-breaking update,” I said, smiling, “hot off the presses. I have finally learned my lesson about men.”
“Impressive,” Wes said, offering me support. “I can see you are a changed woman. Mature. Sensible. Strangely calm in the eye of the storm.”
I smiled at him.
“And your enlightenment…from where did this deep well of wisdom spring?” he asked.
“From a sadder but wiser little lurcher named Trixie.”
Wes enjoyed his laugh.
“No. I’m serious here.”
“So where are you off to?” Wes asked.
“To go call Dexter.”
Wes laughed again.
“Well,” I said, “I’ve got to congratulate him, don’t I?
Sports Illustrated.
Wow. That boy takes direction.”
Snaps for the jazziest people I am blessed to know:
SOLOISTS
:
Smokin’ Sam Farmer
on sax
Cookin’ Nick Farmer
on drums
The Fabulous Chris “Daddy-O” Farmer
on lead guitar
Lyssa “Manhattan Slim” Keusch,
editor
Evan “The Living End” Marshall,
agent
Mix-Master Michael Morrison,
publisher
May “Chops” Chen,
invaluable assistant
Big Gun Peggy Tataro,
firearms expert
D. P. “The Doc” Lyle, M.D.,
medical expert
Hot Note Heather Haldeman,
Conrad’s expert
Boogie Woogie Barbara Voron,
first reader
INSPIRATION BY
:
Swingin’ Susan Anderson
Jumpin’ Jan Burke
Snap-Your-Cap Sally Fellows
Super-Murgitroid Margery Flax
Drivin’ Doris Ann Norris
Cool Carol Tager
The Prince of Wails, Mark Tager and a great round of applause to all the Buds, baby
Scrumptious praise for JERRILYN FARMER, MADELINE BEAN, and PERFECT SAX
“An entertaining story…[with] precise plotting; appealing, realistic characters; crisp dialogue, and a wry sense of humor…
Perfect Sax
shows how a light mystery doesn’t have to be be lightweight and why the amateur sleuth mysteries can be endearing.”
FORT LAUDERDALE SUN-SENTINEL
“Farmer’s seventh breezy culinary mystery smoothly blends all the right ingredients—Beverly Hills money mania, tart humor, romance, and, of course, murder…Farmer’s menus and decorating descriptions, glimpses into the high-end Hollywood lifestyle, and warmly conversational tone will delight fans of lighter crime capers.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
“Madeline Bean is charming, the food is divine, and the Hollywood background is juicy.”
JILL CHURCHILL
“Farmer not only folds her heroine’s career as a caterer/party planner seamlessly into the plots but also…provides a glimpse into the not-always-glamorous world of Los Angeles’s wealthy movers and shakers.”
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
“Farmer can ham-and-egg her way through a comedic mystery series with ease.”
PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE
T
HE
F
LAMING
L
UAU OF
D
EATH
P
ERFECT
S
AX
M
UMBO
G
UMBO
D
IM
S
UM
D
EAD
K
ILLER
W
EDDING
I
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R
ECEPTION
S
YMPATHY FOR THE
D
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The Flaming Luau of Death
Pour yourself a mai-tai, sit back, and join Madeline Bean and her cohorts on a vacation in paradise that suddenly takes a deadly turn…
When her beloved assistant Holly Nichols sets her wedding date, Madeline Bean throws the hippest bachelorette luau ever—a destination bridal shower on the big island of Hawaii. The moonlight hula lessons! The coconut grilled shrimp! The dead man floating in the surf!
Suddenly, the bride has a case of the jitters. To smooth the matrimonial path, Maddie must track down the mystery man Holly may have married a decade ago…and forgot to divorce. With the luau guests enjoying one passion fruit martini too many, Maddie catching the eye of a suspiciously laid-back beach boy, a murderer in their midst, and a freaking volcano erupting, it looks like anything but fun in the sun for Maddie and company.
The Flaming Luau of Death
Available Winter 2005 in hardcover from William Morrow
A
tall, willowy blonde stood silently in the doorway to my office. She was wrapped, all six-feet of her, in one striking color. Bright pink flip-flops with matching toenail polish. Hot pink jeans and jacket over a tiny pink bandeau. Shocking pink sailor’s cap tipped at an angle above her whiteblonde bangs. How long had this vision of raspberry sherbet been standing there?
“Holly.” My voice sounded calm. Good. I remembered to smile. “Wow. You’re early today.”
“Um,” she said. “I was actually kind of hoping I could maybe talk to you. Just for a minute. You know, if you have time.”
I straightened a few papers absently, and in the process, scuttled the ocean-turquoise travel brochure for Hawaii beneath the pile of chef’s catalogs and order forms on my desk, where it had been sticking out like a Britney Spears fan at a Julie Andrews concert.
“Hey, then,” I said to my assistant, intoning just the right casual, cheerful note. “Sit down.”
“Where’s Wesley?” she asked, arranging her lean legs in a puzzle of twists as she took the chair opposite my desk.
“Kitchen.” I casually swept aside the pile of papers on my desk. “Doing Friday morning stuff.”
Wesley Westcott and I own an event planning company in Los Angeles, going on eight years, which we operate out of my house. Holly has been with us almost from the start. Our firm does every kind of way-out party. Every kind. From the killer “Mock” Mitzvah we threw for the thirteen-year-old daughter of a millionaire rapper—never mind the family is Southern Baptist—to a series of small dinners for a hip mahjongg club of Hollywood Hills gamblers, we just kind of elevate the celebratory insanity to meet our town’s taste for the lavish. For each event, Wes and Holly and I work out every detail, plan every menu option, spend a ton of our clients’ cash to achieve, as close as we ever can, a perfect party.
“Look, I know you’re busy,” Holly said, her manner much more subdued than her outfit. “But…”
“What’s up?”
Holly fiddled with the enormous pink diamond on her third finger. “You know how I am, right?” She squunched her nose.
I began to pay closer attention. Aside from the standardfor-Holly outrageous wardrobe—the blinding garb and the neon-hued lipstick—I was beginning to perceive that this didn’t look entirely like my usual Holly. My usual Holly was a million smiles, a pedal-to-the-metal talker. But now she was quiet. And I noticed her twisting her ring around and around. “Is something wrong, sweetie? Are you having some…” (There had to be a kinder word than “doubts”) “…some thoughts about your wedding, Holl?”
“Yeah. How’d you…?” She looked up at me. “Well, yeah.”
“Is it Donald?”
“Donald? No, no. Donald is great. He’s fine.”
“Okay, then. Cool.” The way she was acting had me worried, there.
“Donald?” she said, laughing. “He’s fantastic. What a guy!”
In only two weeks time, Holly Nichols is to have her big
dream wedding and become Mrs. Donald Lake. There had been all the usual plans and festivities. I thought they were extremely cute together. But truthfully, as a couple, they’d been through more than their share of ups and downs. On any given month, frankly, it was difficult to remember if they were on or off. But for most of the past six months, they’d been on. Way on. I looked at my watch. 8:34. We had twenty-six minutes, but I really should have been in the kitchen already working with Wes, so…“Okay, talk.”
“Maddie, you know how you help people sometimes? Not just with planning the parties. I mean how you can solve problems for people. Like you look into things and figure them out.”
“I like to get to the bottom of things. Yes.”
“Take a look at this.” Holly unzipped her hot pink purse, a narrow leather roll hardly large enough to hold a tube of lipstick and a pack of mints. She pulled out a piece of white copier paper that had been folded, fanlike, into a tiny slip, and handed it across the desk to me.
I unpleated the paper. It held a printed message and appeared to be a printout from Holly’s e-mail account. Netscape, I noticed right away, and in the Subject field, it read: Ugly Trouble Coming. The e-mail was from: [email protected], but that meant nothing. Anyone could set up a gotmail account, they were free and untraceable, and hide their true identity. The date field said 5:02 this morning. It was addressed to Holly Dubinsky at holly@madbean events.com, her company e-mail account. The note read:
Mrs. Dubinsky,
Your husband won’t be able to hide forever. And if we can’t find him, we’ll come and do our dirty business with you. Be smart. Give us Marvin and we’ll leave you alone.
It was not signed.
“But,” I said, rereading the note, “it’s a mistake. You’re Holly Nichols. Your husband-to-be is a screenwriter named Donald Lake. This is not you.”
“Well…”
I looked up. Holly repositioned herself, rewrapping, right over left, long thin pink denim legs.
“There’s this other thing. And I was meaning to get to this other thing, Mad. I was meaning to. But time just sort of slipped away from me.”
“This
other
thing?”
Holly tipped her jaunty cap at a slightly different angle and chewed her lip.
I waited as patiently as I could, considering Wes was presently in the kitchen just down the hall at the back of the house, receiving our secret guests all alone, and probably wondering why I was taking so long. Finally I could hold it in no longer. “Holly? This other thing?”
“This other thing,” Holly said, “is kind of a goofy thing. Look, you know me. I have all the best intentions. Right? I want to help my fellow man. Women, too.” She stopped and looked up.
“You’re a helper,” I prompted.
“Thanks. And then, sometimes I can get distracted. I mean, I don’t have anything like A.D.D. or that, but you know I’ve never been tested for it, either, and…”
“Holly,” I said, with a little snap to my voice. “Please. This century.”
“Okay. I think I got married when I was eighteen to a guy named Marvin. Frankly, I could hardly remember his last name.”
I stared at her.
She continued. “I guess it could have been Dubinsky.”
