The Bad Always Die Twice (7 page)

“But you
are
disappointed in me.” Jessica looked her in the eye. “Oh, God, that’s why I didn’t tell you—I didn’t want you to be disappointed in me.” She sniffed. “Again.”

Nikki dropped her hands to her lap. “I only want what’s best for you, and men like Rex—”

“I know, I know. I swear to God that I’ll never do it again.” She gripped the shopping bag containing her $1800 shoes, given to her, no doubt, by one of her
admirers
. Maybe even Rex. “Just get me through this and I swear I’m done with married men. I’m done with Sugar Daddies, married, unmarried. It doesn’t matter.” She rested her hand on Nikki’s arm, her second display of affection in the same day. “Help me, Nikki. Help me get through this and I’m turning over a new leaf. I swear to God I am.”

Nikki stared straight ahead. “Did you know he was alive?”

“Rex? Oh, sweet Jesus, no. I didn’t. You have to believe me. I didn’t know. We had a fight, and then . . . then the next thing I knew, his plane went down and he was gone. He . . . he was just gone.”

Nikki exhaled and glanced at her friend. “Enough with the tears. Your mascara will run.”

Jessica sniffed and laughed. “You believe me?”

“Of course I believe you,” Nikki said gently. “Now drop off the shoes and let’s go to work. We’ve got estates to sell and a murder to solve.”

Nikki punched in the security code and waited as the white iron gates swung open, admitting her onto her mother’s property in Beverly Hills, north of Sunset. It was an older, well-established neighborhood, the residence of the stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, like Jimmy Stewart and Lucille Ball.

Nikki had arrived home to find that the doggies had not been dropped off. It had taken three phone calls, one in which Victoria
accidentally
hung up on her, to learn that Stan and Ollie were still
visiting
. According to Victoria, Amondo had been busy all day with errands for her and hadn’t had time to run them home to Nikki’s. It was a ploy, of course, on Victoria’s part, to get Nikki to come over. It worked. As tired as she was, she wanted to see her dogs, so she’d left Jessica with the TV remote control and a bag of take-out Chinese and headed over to the 1000 block of Roxbury Drive.

Nikki maneuvered her car around the piles of twigs and yard debris that her mother’s gardener, Jorge, had left in the circular driveway. “Really, Frank? Really?” Nikki muttered, her favorite line from
Always Sunny in Philadelphia
.

Jorge wasn’t just her mother’s landscaper/gardener. He was the son of Victoria’s housekeeper, Ina, who’d been with Victoria since the golden years of her cinema days. Nikki had practically grown up with Jorge, and in a lot of ways, she was closer to him than her half-siblings. Nikki had spent a great deal of her childhood hanging out in Ina’s cozy kitchen playing go fish, then old maid, then gin rummy with Jorge. He had been the first boy she ever kissed—purely a rehearsal for the real deal.

As Nikki slalomed around the piles of cuttings, her phone rang on the seat. It was Jeremy. It was the fourth time he’d called since the previous night. She studied the phone for a moment. She didn’t even know why she was avoiding him.

That was a lie. She
did
know.

She hadn’t picked up or returned his multiple messages because she didn’t want to deal with him right now. That was always a bad sign in a relationship, wasn’t it?

She answered on the third ring as she parked her car in front of the two-story, white Georgian with a two-story entry. There was no sign of Jorge or any of his utility trucks. Over the years, Jorge had expanded his business from one guy and a pickup truck to four vans and utility trailers and twelve to fifteen employees, thanks to a personal loan from Victoria.

“Hey,” she said into the phone.

“Nikki, I was beginning to worry. Why didn’t you call me back? I left four messages.”

“And how was your day, dear? Mine was terrific.” She shifted the car into park and turned off the engine. “Except for the part when my best friend found a dead man in her bed and then was accused of killing him and hauled off to the slammer.”

Jeremy sighed on the other end of the line. “Sorry. It’s just that I really was worried about you. And no one calls it ‘the slammer’ anymore, no one but eighty-year-old men, hon.”

She smiled. It was nice to hear his sexy dentist voice. “Sorry about being so touchy. I’m fine. I didn’t call you back because I haven’t had time—” She stopped and started again. “I know you’re not a big fan of Jessica’s. I guess I just didn’t want you to judge.”

“I wouldn’t judge. Innocent until proven guilty. I just wanted to know what was going on and make sure you were okay. When Victoria called, she said—”

“My mother called you?” she interrupted. She put the window down. The evening breeze felt good. The air was filled with the scent of bougainvillea and fresh-cut grass and she could hear the bubble of the massive three-tiered fountain in the middle of the front lawn. “Why, for heaven’s sake, did she call you?”

“You’re getting touchy again,” he warned. “She cares about you, that’s all. You don’t always give her enough credit.”

Nikki eyed the second-story windows on the end of the Paul Williams Georgian. Her mother’s room. Victoria didn’t like it when her daughter sat in the driveway on her cell phone. It meant Victoria couldn’t hear what was being said, leaving her uninformed. A fate worse than overenthusiastic eyebrow waxing. It would only be a matter of time before Victoria was down here, staring in the car window at her.

“I’m sorry, Jeremy,” she said. “You’re right. I’m just beat, that’s all.”

“So did the police really arrest Jessica for killing Rex March?”

She rubbed her temples and eyed the window again. She thought she could hear Stanley and Oliver barking . . . in the backyard, maybe. “She wasn’t arrested. Not yet at least. But she was held all night at the Hollywood precinct for questioning.”

“Crazy question, but I went to his memorial service with you. How did Jess kill him if he was already dead?”

“Jess didn’t kill him!” It came out louder than she intended. “It doesn’t make any more sense to me than it does to you,” she said, softening her tone.

“But he was definitely the dead man found in Jessica’s apartment? The police didn’t make a mistake in identifying the body?”

“Oh, it was him, all right.” She began to dig in her bag, hoping to find something to eat. The hot Szechuan chicken hadn’t smelled the least bit appetizing when she’d picked it up for Jessica, but suddenly she was starving. “I saw him with my own eyes. Dead as a doornail—more like a swollen carcass—in Jess’s bed.”

“Aw, Christ, I’m sorry you had to see that, Nik.”

She heard the distinct crackle of a food wrapper and dug deeper in anticipation of what the Prada might give up. “Yeah. Me, too. It was pretty awful. And it was definitely Rex.” She tried not to think about the hole where his eye had been or the ridiculous underwear he’d been wearing; either would make her nauseous.

“Did . . . did the police offer an explanation as to how he could have been dead in Jessica’s apartment when he supposedly died in a plane crash?”

“Well, obviously, he didn’t die in a plane crash,” she said, unable to curtail her sarcasm. “But the cops didn’t really address
that
issue.” Bingo! She pulled half a pack of peanuts from her bag; they were probably stale, but she was too hungry to care. “They were more into the whole ‘Why did you kill him, Miss Martin?’ ”

“And Jessica says she didn’t do it?”

Nikki rested her BlackBerry between her shoulder and her ear so she could attack the bag of peanuts. “Of course she didn’t do it. She was at a real estate seminar all day. I’m sure she’s got plenty of witnesses who saw her there.”

“That’s good, then,” he agreed. “As long as the coroner can pinpoint when he was murdered, and she’s got an alibi for that window of time.”

“Right.” Nikki groaned. Leave it to Jeremy to always get right to the crux of the matter. “The thing is, that’s going to be an issue. I didn’t exactly understand what Jessica was trying to tell me this morning, but somehow Rex’s liver temperature was an issue. Jess said the cops acted like her alibi wasn’t that strong. Especially since she apparently spent a
long
lunch hour shopping.” She munched on the peanuts. “I’m going to look into it. Once we know what time he died, I thought I could retrace her ride down Rodeo. Surely some clerk remembers her.”

“Whoa, wait a minute. Go back.
You’re
going to talk to the sales clerks? Nikki, that’s not up to you. I agree with Victoria.”

As if on cue, the upstairs window opened and Victoria popped her head out. She was never late on a cue.

“I know you’re Jessica’s friend,” Jeremy went on, oblivious of the peanuts or Victoria’s entrance. “But you can’t get involved in a murder investigation.”

“You coming in or do you plan to sit out there all night?” Victoria hollered down. Her voice carried well for a woman her age.

“Jeremy, hold on a sec. Mother’s paging me.” Nikki lowered the phone. “I’ll be up in a minute. It’s Jeremy,” she said, hoping to placate her. Victoria
loved
Jeremy.

“Sorry,” Nikki said into the phone. “I’m going to have to go. I’m at Mother’s, picking up the boys.”

“Ask him if he’s coming Wednesday night,” Victoria called down. Her turban was lavender terrycloth. She must have just gotten out of the shower.

Nikki sighed as she glanced up, then refocused on the peanut bag again. It was empty. “Jeremy, Mother wants to know if you’re coming tomorrow night.” She dumped the peanut dust into her mouth.

“Tell him I’m showing
The Little Foxes
, 1942.”

Nikki exhaled. “She’s showing—”

“With Bette Davis, directed by William Wyler,” Victoria interrupted again. She was shouting now. For a woman who had been smoking for close to sixty years, she had good lungs.

Nikki dropped her head back on the headrest. “You get that, Jeremy?”

He chuckled. He thought everything Victoria said and did was amusing. He loved Victoria as much as she loved him. Their love affair got old, for Nikki, after awhile. Sometimes it was so bad that Nikki felt as if she was the third wheel in the threesome. They just so
got
each other. Maybe it was the whole Hollywood star background. Jeremy had been a child star, then a teen heartthrob. He’d given it all up for the East Coast, dental school, and a sane, ordinary life. It wasn’t until his wife had died and Nikki had come into his life again that his world got crazy again.

“Got it,” Jeremy said. “Tell her I’m sorry, but I can’t make it. Jerry’s got a soccer game and there’s a PTA board meeting at Lani’s school. I can’t get out of it.”

“He can’t make it,” Nikki hollered up to her mother’s window. “Jeeze,” she muttered under her breath, realizing how ridiculous this would look to anyone watching them. Unless, of course, they knew Victoria. Nikki climbed out of the car. “He’s got stuff with the kids!”

Victoria still hung in the open window. “Tell him he’s going to miss the fresh oysters I’m having flown in.”

“She says—”

“I got that, too.” Jeremy was still chuckling. “You go see your mom. We can talk later.”

“Sure,” Nikki surrendered. “And maybe we could get together this weekend?” She hoped she didn’t sound too pathetic or needy. She knew their relationship was complicated right now, but she really did miss him.

“I’ll see what’s on my schedule.”

There was a silence on the phone, but it was a comfortable silence. It made her feel close to him, if only for those few seconds. “Talk to you later,” she whispered.

“Later.”

Nikki dropped her phone into her bag and glanced up at her mother, still hovering in the window. “You’re going to fall out of that window to your death, one of these days, and your face will be plastered all over the
Enquirer
, ‘Drugged-out Victoria Bordeaux Commits Suicide.’ ”

Victoria slammed the window shut.

Nikki smiled as she went inside and crossed the black-and-white tile floor. The front hall was big enough to be a mausoleum. Her footsteps echoed up the wrought-iron curving staircase. As children, she and Jorge—sometimes she and Jorge
and
Jeremy—had played hopscotch on these tiles, until Ina caught them and threatened to beat them with a fly swatter.

She could hear the dogs barking in the back of the house. She went through the elegant hall, past the formal living room, dining room, and parlor (which most people called a family room) and into the enormous kitchen. Ina had her head in the refrigerator and the dogs were circling the granite island, which was big enough to build a vacation home on.

“Chiquita,” Ina greeted.

“Hi, Ina. Was Jorge here today? I haven’t seen him in weeks.”

“Not Jorge. One of the lazy hombres who works for him.” She had no Spanish accent after all these years of living in the U.S. (legally!), but she still liked to spice up her conversation with Spanish words. “I called Jorge and I said, ‘Jorge, those are lazy hombres who work for you. They leave sticks in Victoria Bordeaux’s driveway.’ I said, ‘Jorge, fire those lazy hombres before they ruin your business.’ ”

“And what did he say?”

She spiced up the conversation with a few choice curse words. “I had to leave a message.”

“Ah,” Nikki said, knowing better than to say anything further when Ina was in one of her moods. She crouched and the dogs hopped up and down, barking a greeting. “There’s my boys! How are my boys?” She petted Stanley and then Oliver and then Stanley, the needier of the two, again. “Have you been good boys for Grandma? Have you?”

“This is a game with you, isn’t it? A game you’re making into a career.” Victoria glided into the kitchen. She still wore the lavender turban, and was dressed in a floor-length, white silk robe. “Vexing me.” She turned to Ina. “Tea?”

“Be ready in a second. You want it in your room or by the pool?” Ina was still moving things around in the refrigerator.

“It’s a nice evening. Poolside.” Victoria headed for the back door. “Nicolette.”

“I’m not staying, Mother. No tea for me, Ina,” she called over her shoulder as she followed Victoria outside. The dogs flew past them; they preferred their “grandmother’s” yard to Nikki’s. More room to run.