The Bad Always Die Twice (10 page)

“Maybe she was upset because Rex came alive long enough to make a mess of her life again?”

“Possibly, but it seemed like something more. Different.”

“What about the hunky boyfriend?”

Nikki rolled her eyes. Marshall had a crush on Thompson Christopher. Marshall had wanted to go with her to the party at Edith’s the other night, just so he could drool over the actor, but his agent hadn’t been able to get him out of a previous commitment.

Nikki thought back to her visit. “Mr. Hunky was attentive to Edith. He was saying all the right things. Doing all the right things. But he seemed upset, too. Both of them acted like they didn’t want me there. And they’d been super-friendly the night of the party—before Rex turned up again.
Genuinely
friendly.”

“Hmm,” Marshall pondered. “Maybe Rob will know something. He’s not in the Hollywood department, but you know very well that cops talk. They’re worse than teenage girls.” He looked at her. “You want me to ask him what the scuttlebutt is? Maybe he knows something the police aren’t telling Jessica.”

Rob Bastone was Marshall’s sweet, kind partner of ten years, who disguised himself as a tattooed, hard-ass L.A. police detective.

She sat up and Stanley crawled into her lap. Realizing his pal was getting all the attention, Oliver high-tailed it toward her. “Can he do that?”

Marshall sat up and scooped Oliver into his lap. “For me?” He grinned and scratched Oliver behind the ears. “For me, sweetie, he’d do
anything
.”

“What about that time he refused to sneak you into the Ricky Martin concert he was doing security for?”

“That?” Marshall stroked Oliver’s silky coat. “It wasn’t that he didn’t want me to see Ricky. He was concerned for my safety.”

She grinned. “Ah.”

“I’ll feel him out.” He wrinkled his large, well-shaped nose, somehow managing to appear both gay and heartthrobby at the same time. “He knows how much I love gossip.”

“I’d appreciate any help you guys could give me.” Nikki rose. “I better get back to Jessica.”

“What you better do is have a hot cup of tea and get the tea bags on those bags under your eyes. You need some sleep.” He deposited Ollie on the ground and walked with her toward the gate. “You need a Xanax or something?”

She glanced at him, making a face. “You know me better than that. I don’t need a Xanax.”

The dogs raced away, taking one more lap around the pool before they headed home, sweet home, to bed. Without a Xanax.

Nikki sat in her car on Outpost Drive, studying the gate leading up to the March house. She wanted to get inside and talk to Edith’s house staff; the staff always knew the details of their employers’ lives. She’d been clever enough to come when she knew Edith would be at her regularly scheduled hair appointment. It was funny how intimately she got to know a client, and then they just disappeared from her life after the sale.

So, Nikki knew Edith and Thompson wouldn’t be there. He always went with her when she got her hair done. But what Nikki
didn’t
know was how she was going to get in. Even though she had been showing the house regularly for months, she didn’t have the code to get in the front gate. She and Jessica always scheduled the appointment and just called up to the house when they arrived. One of the servants would then let them in, as per Edith’s instructions.

Nikki heard the sound of a small engine starting up and she craned her neck to see through the iron fence that bordered the property on the street side. It sounded like a weed-whacker. Bingo! Jorge serviced Edith’s lawn. If it wasn’t Jorge himself, it had to be one of his employees. Nikki grabbed her handbag and, on impulse, the In & Out bag on the car seat—Jessica’s lunch that Nikki had picked up to take back to the office. Victoria had taught Nikki it was always polite to take a gift to the host or hostess.

She approached the iron gate and spotted one of Jorge’s employees, whom she knew. He was trimming a bush. “Harley,” she called.

He continued to whack at the bush.

She hollered his name louder, and when he turned, startled, she flashed that smile Victoria had ingrained in her. He smiled back.

Worked every time.

Harley cut off the weed-whacker and lifted his goggles as he approached the gate. “Mithss Nikki.” He had a bit of a lisp, due to unfortunate tooth arrangement and lack of orthodontia as a child.

She knew she blushed. She’d told Harley before just to call her Nikki, but he hailed from the Deep South and family traditions died hard. He’d once told her his granny would “whip hiths heinie with a swithch” if he didn’t address her with proper respect.

“Hey, Harley. Could you let me in? Mrs. March isn’t home and I need to get some info on curtains in the house.”

“You want to drive up?”

“Nah, I’ll walk.” She gave a little laugh. “It’s a nice day and I need the exercise.”

He hit a button on the keypad on the inside and there was a mechanical click, then a dull buzz as the gate parted in the middle and slid open.

“Thanks.” She crossed the threshold, feeling only slightly guilty for being so devious. “You eat lunch?” She held up the bag, a grease stain already spreading on it.

“I don’t want to take your lunch, Mithss Nikki.”

“You won’t be. Long story, but it’s extra. If you don’t eat it, it’ll lie on the floor of my car until I toss it or the dogs find it.” She held out the bag.

“Thankths, Mithss Nikki.” He took it, nodding his head. His green hat read JORGE & SON. There was no son; Jorge was divorced with no children. He’d just liked the name when he chose it for his landscaping company. That, and he hoped someday to have a son.

“You have a good day, Harley,” she said as she started up the paved driveway. “I can let myself out.”

“You have a good day, too,” he called after her. “Thankths.”

When Nikki reached the house, instead of going up to the front door, she cut across the grass, around to the back service entrance where deliveries were made and the house staff entered and exited. The service wing, with a commercial kitchen, storage, and a maid’s room, had been added to the house by the previous owner.

Nikki debated whether or not to ring the doorbell. Even though it would only ring in the kitchen, she decided against it. It would be better if she acted as if she was supposed to be there. “Hey there,” she called as she came through the door.

Chessy, who cooked and cleaned for the Marches, was sitting in a chair, watching a game show on a small TV on one of the marble counters. Chessy was the blackest woman Nikki thought she’d ever met. Her skin was so black, it almost looked blue.

When Nikki walked in, Chessy was grinding out a cigarette in an ashtray inside a drawer under the counter. “Good God, you scared me!” Chessy exclaimed. She had come half out of her seat in her attempt to hide her cigarette and was now depositing her three-hundred-and-fifty-plus pounds back into the chair. “Whatchu doin’ comin’ in the back? The Missus’s not here.”

“Which is why I’m coming through the back,” Nikki explained, closing the door behind her. “How are you, Chessy?”

Nikki and Chessy had gotten to be friends in the months leading up to the sale of the house. Edith liked to think she ran the household, but it was Chessy who did the actual running. She oversaw the yard work, the housecleaning, and the food preparation. On a night like last Saturday night when Edith had thrown the party, Chessy had overseen the entire catering operation, start to finish. She was a woman of many talents, with a no-nonsense attitude.

“I’m good, ’cept you scared the bejeezus outta me and prob’ly a year of my life.” She opened the drawer to check that the smoking cigarette was out and closed it again. “What can I do you for?”

“I brought you those free movie tickets, for you and your boyfriend.” Nikki grabbed the envelope from her bag and slid it across the wide expanse of the counter. The kitchen was massive, entirely too big for the size of the Spanish-style home built in the 1920s on three-quarters of an acre. The pricey kitchen with its miles of marble, Viking stoves, and walk-in refrigerator had been one of the reasons why the house had been hard to sell, tacky decor aside.

Nikki gave the envelope a little push. “And to ask you some questions. About . . . about what was going on, on Monday . . . the day Mr. March was found dead.”

“Ah.” Chessy picked up the envelope and peeked inside. “I still get to keep the movie tickets, even if I don’t answer your questions?”

“Of course.” Now Nikki really
did
feel guilty. If Harley had refused to open the gate for her, would she have thrust Jessica’s lunch through the fence to him, anyway?

“I really liked them cupcakes you brought last week.” Chessy slid the envelope into the open neckline of her uniform and it disappeared into the mountainous region of her breasts. “Papers said your partner, Miss High-and-Mighty, killed Mr. March.”

Nikki came around the end of the marble counter. “She didn’t, Chessy. I swear she didn’t.”

Chessy reached out with a remote control and the TV went off. “Wouldn’t matter to me if she did. I didn’t like him, not one bit,” she said matter-of-factly. She heaved her full weight out of the chair. “You know how to devein shrimp, girl?”

Nikki stared at her, having a hard time seeing the segue. “Um . . . sure.”

“I always know’d Victoria Bordeaux had beauty
and
brains.” Chessy tossed her an apron from the counter. “Got shrimp cocktail to make. You devein, I’ll talk. I hate deveinin’ shrimp, almost as much as havin’ to get the missus outta bed a second time to tell her her no-good husband’s dead again.”

Chapter 9

“S
o, what you wanna know?” Chessy popped the top on a can of Coke she’d taken from the walk-in refrigerator, along with three pounds of jumbo shrimp. According to Chessy, Edith had friends coming to
pay their respects
and get tipsy over cocktails that afternoon. There was chicken liver pâté to make, too.

Nikki slid the deveiner through the back of a shrimp. She didn’t have the heart to tell Chessy that her mother hadn’t taught her how to devein shrimp. Nikki was pretty certain Victoria Bordeaux had
never
deveined a shrimp. Discovered around the age of seventeen (Victoria’s dates were always a little fuzzy), then launched into stardom, she’d never kept her own house. Never had to. But she
had
been smart enough to hire a woman like Ina. Not only had Ina deveined shrimp for Victoria for the last thirty years, she’d taught Nikki how to devein a shrimp, how to make a true dirty martini, and how to sew up a Christmas turkey. All skills fortysomething L.A. women were sorely lacking these days.

“I’m trying to piece together what happened Monday.” Letting her hands fall, she glanced up at Chessy, who was leaning on the counter across from her, sipping the Coke. “With Jessica. And . . . here.”

“Keep cleanin’.” Chessy waved her hand. “Can’t you talk and devein at the same time, girl?”

Nikki neatly ripped out another vein. “I was wondering if you knew.” She gave a little laugh. “Of course you know. You know
everything
that goes on here. I guess what I’m asking is if you could tell me what happened here Monday. Who went where, when,” she said quickly, before she lost her nerve or her grip on a slippery shrimp.

“Your floozy girl got herself an alibi?”

“She does.” Nikki nodded. “She was at a real estate conference downtown . . . and she did some shopping. Plenty of people saw her.”

The door that led into the main part of the house opened and Chessy’s daughter, Shondra, entered the kitchen carrying a plastic caddy with cleaning supplies. She threw the caddy up on the counter. “I swear, if that man doesn’t stop cutting his toenails in that bathroom and
flippin’
’em all over the floor, I’m going to kill him.” She glanced up at Nikki as she headed for the refrigerator and lifted an eyebrow. “Real estate business gone sour for you?”

Nikki held up both hands, a shrimp in one, the deveiner in the other. “It’s always good to have a backup plan, right?”

“She was tryin’ to bribe me, get me to give up who was where that day,” Chessy explained.

“I wasn’t trying to
bribe
you,” Nikki protested, the guilt creeping in again.

Chessy broke into a grin. “ ’Course you wasn’t. I know good people when I see ’em. But I got you to devein them shrimp, didn’t I?” She cackled.

Nikki laughed along with her. Too few people in L.A. could laugh at themselves. “I’m trying to help out my friend Jessica,” Nikki explained to Shondra. “You know, my partner Jessica.”

“Oh, I know her, all right.” The younger woman pulled a Coke from the fridge. “It sure doesn’t look good for her, from what the papers are saying.”

Nikki dropped a clean shrimp into the bowl. “The case is more complicated than the papers are saying. Rex wasn’t killed in Jessica’s apartment.”

“I don’t know why we’re wastin’ good taxpayer money investigating him bein’ dead. I don’t know nobody who liked him. You know he tried to feel me up once!” Chessy covered her monstrous breasts with her hands and readjusted the alignment. “I understand him wantin’ a little taste of Shondra, her bein’ pretty as she is, but me?” Chessy made a clicking sound between her teeth and took another swig of Coke. “That man was garbage. I’m glad he’s dead. I’d have killed him myself, if I’d gotten the chance. What was wrong with that man, claimin’ he was dead, then comin’ back? But I was here all day, still cleanin’ up after that party. Caterers and such come back for their stuff saw me. And Shondra had a job bein’ a perfume girl downtown. And you can tell anyone you want that.” She pointed at Nikki to emphasize her position on the matter.

“Actually . . .” Nikki grimaced. “I was wondering if you could tell me what Edith did Monday . . . and Thompson?”

“You think the missus killed him?” Chessy chewed on that thought for a moment. “I don’t think she’s got it in her, otherwise she’d’a’done it years ago.”

That seemed to be the general consensus.

“So do you know where she was?” Nikki reached for another shrimp. She was getting the hang of it now and moving faster.