The Housewife Assassin's Guide to Gracious Killing (24 page)

“He was a last minute addition. He’s… my date. He’s been in here a million times before! Lawrence works for our florist.” Slowly, she walks up to Arnie. Crouching down, she gently strokes the blood off his cheek. “My God, what have you done to him?” Stiffly, she straightens up. “Untie him immediately!”

The thug looks from her, to Carl, and back to her again. Will she super-Nanny her way around him? Obviously, she can, because he pulls loose the ties on Arnie’s constraints.

Edwina nods at him, satisfied. “And I presume since, you’ve taken the wrong person into custody, the right one is now walking out the door with the rest of the party guests.”

Carl frowns. “Who the hell told the guards to let them leave?”

Edwina hesitates, as if taken aback by the question. Finally, in a firm but menacing voice, she murmurs, “Mr. Breck did, of course. He took you at your word, that you’d caught the assassin.” Defiantly, she puts her hand on Arnie’s shoulder. “I’ll leave it to you to tell him you were mistaken.”

Carl’s glare should make her wither, but she stands her ground. Really, she’s holding onto Arnie. Finally, Carl snaps his fingers, Carl’s thugs follow him out of the office.

Jack grabs Arnie’s arm and they start out the door. When Arnie reaches the threshold, he looks back at Edwina. “I don’t understand why you did it, but thank you.”

She waves him on.

After they leave, I close the door behind them. Edwina flops down into a chair, burying her head in her hands.

“Why did you lie to save him?”

“Because I know he’s not the shooter. He’s… he’s harmless.”

Does she really believe that? 

Whether she does or not, does it matter? Without her help, Arnie would’ve been killed. Forget the lens gel. Edwina may have a shady past, but I know this much: she’s certainly not one of the bad guys. And at this point, that’s all that matters.

“Edwina, there was a woman in the fun house with Breck. Her name is Serena, and she’s Tiffy Coxhead’s nanny. She’s here without a green card, but Rutherford Collins solicited her for the Brecks’ au pair position anyway. I saw Breck clawing at her when he got shot. But she wasn’t in the grand ballroom with everyone else, and I’m concerned about her.”

From the look on Edwina’s face, apparently she is, too. “I—I can’t take it anymore.” She buries her head in her hands and sobs.

I walk over to pat her head.

The silence around us is broken by the faint buzz of her desk phone.

Slowly, as if she’s carrying a hundred pounds of angst on her shoulders, she walks over to her desk and picks it up. For the longest time she says nothing. Finally, she says just two words: “Of course.”

Then she hangs up.

Without another word, she opens one of the bottom drawers in her desk, and pulls out a tiny sewing kit. “I must go now. The shooting has caused the summit to be called off. In fact, Asimov has already left Lion’s Lair, and Mr. Breck is on his way to the Santa Monica Airport, where he keeps his private plane. He wants to recuperate on his private island.”

She plucks through a collection of buttons until she finds what she is looking for: a tiny thumb drive. She hands it to me. “Should anything happen to this Serena person—for that matter, if anything happens to me—please see that this gets to the proper authorities.” 

She waits for my nod, then picks up a valise and shuffles slowly out the door and down the hall, toward the elevator banks.

I, too, head out the door, toward Janie’s bedroom.

I want to hug and kiss Trisha and never let her out of my sight.

But first things first: I have to get her out of this house of horrors.

Chapter 20

Cleaning Your Silver

Tsk, tsk to tarnished flatware! It’s the sign of a lazy hostess!

 It’s very important that you always use your very best silver for company, and that it sparkles on your table! That said, cleaning each piece prior to your party is a must. The best things to use are organic, nontoxic compounds found in every household. For example, with larger pieces, sponge on some baking soda dampened with hot water, then wipe dry with a soft cotton cloth. If the tarnish is set in deep, make a paste of the baking soda with just a little water, and leave it on the bad spots for an hour or two. 

On a small piece, use toothpaste. Rub some on with your fingers and, voila, the tarnish disappears magically! 

Should you want your guest to disappear with the same ease, no need to get blood on one of your newly polished knives. Just half a tablespoon of aconite does the trick. Voila, they’re dead with no mess, of what appears to be a heart attack. 

When my daughter sleeps, she looks like an angel.

I pick her up gently, and nudge her onto my shoulder. Janie, whose emotional Geiger counter is in tune with all the turmoil roiling around her, puckers her lips in protest of her best friend’s desertion. “But I don’t want Trisha to go home! Please let her stay, Mommy! Please?”

Babette looks helplessly at her daughter, then back to me. “I’m sorry you have to witness Janie at her worst,” she murmurs. “I’m sure she’s just overly tired. When she gets like this, I just don’t know what to do.”

“I heard you hired Serena La Costa as her new nanny. Perhaps she can help.”

Babette gives me a strange look. “I hired who? Oh! The woman who was here tonight, interviewing for the position.” Her hand dismisses this idea. “She left with the rest of the guests. I guess it was too much excitement for her.”

“You actually saw her leave?”

“No, of course not! But she’s not here, so obviously she didn’t pass muster with Jonah.” Babette’s anger causes her cheeks to flush and eyes to narrow. “What are you implying, Donna?”

She knows what I’m asking, and why. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, and you’re allowed to keeping running up his credit cards without a care in the world.

I shrug in disgust. “Well then, have a safe trip.”

“What do you mean? I’m not going anywhere.”

“Edwina said Jonah is leaving for his private island.” 

A frown tamps down her usually tepid smile. “Ha! I should have known. I’m sure he’s going there to lick his wounds over this whole ambassadorship debacle. That’s okay. A little R&R will do him good.”

“So, you aren’t accompanying him?”

Her smirk curdles on her plump lips. “No. And sadly, neither is Edwina. She’s been terminated. Now that he won’t be accepting the ambassadorship, he has no use for her language skills and… her other special talents. Apparently, the breach in security was her fault. Asimov’s people pointed this out to him. From the look on your face, I see you’re disappointed. Don’t worry, he’ll give her a generous severance and a stellar reference—as long as she stays discreet on his behalf.”

In other words, like Babette, Edwina must keep her mouth shut about Breck’s twisted proclivities. 

Without another word, I head out the door.

“Come here,” Jack calls over to me. “You’ve got to see this!” 

“Shhhh! Lower your voice, or you’ll wake Trisha.” I point to my little sleeping beauty, who is now sprawled out over the bed in our guest suite in Lion’s Lair. While Jack flips through the files on the thumb drive Edwina left in my care, I’m tossing my clothes in my bag as fast as I can.

Time to get the hell outta Dodge.

Jack nods towards his iPad. “Turns out Breck sells WMDs! Not only to Asimov, but to the Afghanis, the Iranians, the Taliban, and the Quorum, too.” 

“Oh my God!” Without thinking, I drop the dress in my hand onto the floor. “But selling arms to known terrorists is considered treason. Wait… didn’t he sell off his munitions company around the time he married Babette?”

He shakes his head in anger. “Apparently not. There’s a video clip here, taken during the meeting the other night, between Breck, Asimov and Carl. Edwina must have recorded it, without Breck’s knowledge. It shows that Breck still owns it—along with the Quorum. Together they set up the dummy corporation that apparently bought it.”

“That way, had Breck’s political career taken off as planned, no one would know of his terrorist ties,” I reason. “What a great way to have your cake and eat it, too! I guess the Quorum had him over a barrel when they pushed to have Carl appointed the new CEO of his legitimate corporation, too.” 

“And get this. Sometimes Asimov pays him off with white slaves, which are used for another big revenue generator for Breck. He owns strip joints and whorehouses in every major city in the world! New York, London, Paris, Buenos Aries, Bangkok, you name it.”

“Wait a minute: Emma told me about seeing Antoinette on a porn site—what’s it called again? Oh yeah, Island of Misfit Sluts. Do you see any reference to that?”

“Hold on…” I watch as Jack slides through a few screens and taps a button or two. “There is something that sounds similar on his corporate asset sheet. Its d.b.a. is ‘Misfit Quay.’”

“His private island! I’ll bet it’s where he takes some of the women for his own pleasure. I’m guessing he also films his smut and snuff videos there, and that his internet servers are kept on the island.” I rush to the door. “Jack, Serena will end up there, too. We’ve got to stop him, before he takes off!”

But we can’t leave Trisha here, alone.”

He’s right of course. “Maybe Abu is still here.”

Jack punches in Abu’s number. In a moment, Abu picks up. Jack quickly explains the situation then he hangs up. “Abu will be over in a moment to take Trisha home. Head out to Santa Monica airport. I’ll be right behind you.”

Chapter 21

Airplane Etiquette

Alas, the friendly skies have gotten downright inhospitable these days! This should not be blamed on underpaid flight attendants. Heavens knows they have enough on their hands, what with all the clueless tourists, wailing babies, and cocktail-sodden road warriors they must appease. 

Your way of keeping serenity up in the air is to do the following: First, dress appropriately. Hats, gloves, stockings and your best coat will emphasize your demure disposition, albeit it means more to take off during your strip search. Next, if you’re going to conceal a weapon, make sure it isn’t metal, and do so in a cavity least likely to be searched. (By the way, when you figure out which one that is, let the rest of us in on this much coveted secret.)

And finally, the fact that the plane has run out of gin and vermouth is no reason to open the door and jump.

Breck’s limo has a good head start, but I know a few back roads that will get me to the airport, hopefully in time.

While on the way, my cell buzzes. It’s Emma. “Donna, I’ve finally found the intel we needed on Edwina. Believe it or not, it was in some old KGB files.”

So, Babette was correct about the connection between Edwina and Asimov. “She’s too young to have been an agent.”

“She wasn’t. But apparently, her mother, Irina Sokolov, had friends in high places. Alexei Asimov was her mother’s most important lover, when he was Deputy Chairman of the KGB. His watchers kept a thorough file on him, too.”

“Irina had more than one lover, and Asimov knew about it?”

“Most prostitutes do. I guess I should have called him her john. Granted she was a high-priced call girl, and had been, for at least a few years. Do they call them “call babies” if they’re not yet teens? She was only fifteen when she delivered Edwina.”