Jaine Austen 1 - This Pen for Hire (15 page)

H
e looked me up and down and whistled. “Hubba, hubba,” he said, lust in his eyes.

Unfortunately, the “he” in question wasn’t Cameron, but Mr. Goldman. He grinned at me slyly as I walked into my Seniors Writing Class at the Shalom Retirement Home.

“Got a hot date tonight?”

It was all I could do to keep from leaping on the table and shouting, “Yes! Yes! Yes! With a man who turns my thighs to Jell-O!”

Instead I managed to smile demurely and say: “As a matter of fact, Mr. Goldman, I do happen to have a date tonight.”

“With the gay guy?”

“He’s not gay,” I muttered through clenched teeth.

“Yeah. Right. Just like Liberace wasn’t gay.”

Mrs. Pechter shook her head in annoyance. “Don’t mind him, Ms. Austen. Everyone knows he’s impossible.” Then she turned to Mr. Goldman and hissed, “Put a sock in it, Abe.”

My sentiments, exactly.

“You look pretty as a picture,” she said, turning back to me. The other ladies cooed in agreement.

I blushed as I took my seat at the head of the table.

“Okay, who wants to read first?”

Down at the end of the table, Mrs. Vincenzo raised her hand.

“You’re on, Mrs. V.”

Bette Vincenzo stood up, as she always did to read her essay, holding her slim body erect, her long hair flowing loose down her back.

“‘My Fourth Husband,’ by Bette Vincenzo,” she began.

I didn’t hear a single syllable of Mrs. Vincenzo’s fourth attempt at matrimony. Try as I might to pay attention, my thoughts kept drifting back to Cameron. Mr. Goldman was wrong, wrong, wrong. Cameron wasn’t gay. I’d felt hard evidence to the contrary rolling around with him on the antique sleigh bed. He liked women, that was for sure. And miraculously enough, he liked me! I still couldn’t get over it. Cameron Bannick, he of the crinkly blue eyes and lissome body, actually liked me, Jaine Austen, she of the wiry brown hair and generous thighs.

I saw Mrs. Vincenzo’s lips moving, but the words coming out of her mouth faded into the background, like Muzak in an elevator. I got out my looseleaf binder and turned to an empty page. I picked up my pen and started writing, as if making notes on her essay.

But I wasn’t making notes. I was regressing shamelessly back to my high school days, covering the page with doodles.
Cameron & Jaine. Mrs. Cameron Bannick. J.A. loves C.B.
Any minute now, I expected to hear my old high school principal’s voice on a P.A. system, announcing that tickets were still available for the spring prom.

I drew valentines and daisies and kittens with big eyes. At one point, I looked up and saw Mr. Goldman giving me a fishy stare, as if he knew exactly what I was doing. But I ignored him and kept on doodling until I filled the page. I gazed at my handiwork proudly, thinking that one of these days I really should enroll in an art class.

I doodled my way through Mrs. Ratner’s grandchildren and Mrs. Pechter’s trip to Israel. I’d filled two pages with my lovestruck scribbles, and turned the page to start on a fresh piece of paper when I saw it: a parking ticket. Wedged between two pages.

At first I thought it was the parking ticket I’d gotten that afternoon in Brentwood. But then I saw that it wasn’t issued to a Corolla, but to a Jeep. Cameron’s Jeep. I recognized the license plate number.

I remembered the night Cameron came to class with me and drove me home in his Jeep, the night I bent over and picked up my looseleaf from his messy backseat, ashamed of my ample tush. Little did I realize that far from being turned off by my derriere, Cameron had actually lusted after it.

In the process of gathering my scattered papers, I must’ve shoved the parking ticket inside my looseleaf by mistake. I’d have to give it to Cameron right away. The deadline for paying the ticket had probably come and gone. I checked to see the date the ticket had been written. February Fourteenth. Valentine’s Day. But that couldn’t be. That was the night of Stacy’s murder. Cameron was in San Francisco then. And this ticket was issued in Los Angeles. In Westwood. On Bentley Avenue.

The scene of the crime.

It didn’t make sense. Had Cameron been in town that night? Was he somehow involved in Stacy’s murder?

Impossible, I told myself. The owner of the bed & breakfast in San Francisco said he’d been at her restaurant the night of the murder. Was it possible that she was covering up to protect Cameron? Now that I thought about it, I had no actual proof that he was with her that night.

Suddenly I felt queasy. Had Cameron lied about Stacy? He said he hardly knew her. But maybe he’d known her very well. Maybe he’d been having an affair with her, like every other man in the Western Hemisphere. But even if he had, why would he want to kill her? He wasn’t the type to blow up in a jealous rage like Devon. And unlike Daryush or Andy, he had no wealthy wife that Stacy could use as leverage in a blackmail plot.

I slammed my looseleaf shut, disgusted with myself. What was wrong with me? Here I’d finally met a wonderful guy, and I was accusing him of murder! I was sabotaging the relationship before it even started. I knew perfectly well that Cameron hadn’t been having an affair with Stacy. She wasn’t his type. The only woman he’d been “involved” with in Bentley Gardens was Marian Hamilton.

I knew what was going on. I was probably so afraid of getting close to someone, after my disastrous marriage to The Blob, that I was manufacturing reasons to scurry back to my safe cocoon of celibacy. I was afraid of getting laid, that was what this was all about. First thing tomorrow, I decided, I was going to make an appointment with a shrink.

I tried to concentrate on Mrs. Pechter’s adventures at the Wailing Wall, but it was no use. I couldn’t forget that damn parking ticket. I could give myself all the psychobabble lectures in the world, but I still had a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that Cameron was somehow involved with Stacy’s murder.

I sat through the rest of the class in a daze, counting the minutes till nine o’clock. Mr. Goldman had just started reading the latest installment in “My Life as a Carpet Salesman” when I cut him short.

“I’m sorry, but that’s all we have time for tonight.” With trembling hands I gathered my things and headed for the door.

“Have a nice time on your date!” Mrs. Pechter called out. The other ladies echoed her sentiments, telling me how pretty I looked and to “enjoy yourself, dollink.”

“I still say he’s gay,” Mr. Goldman muttered.

I waved good-bye, forcing my lips into a smile, and headed for the ladies’ room. I needed desperately to splash some cold water on my face.

I walked into the dimly lit bathroom at the end of the corridor and was surprised to see a young woman, her back toward me, brushing her hair. What was a young girl doing at the Shalom Retirement Home?

But then she turned around and I saw that it wasn’t a young woman, after all, but Mrs. Vincenzo. With her long hair and slim body, I’d mistaken her for someone much younger. And suddenly I was reminded of Marian Hamilton and her long blond hair. How easy it would have been, in the right lighting, to mistake her for a young woman. A young woman like Stacy. Hadn’t Cameron told me how much the two of them looked alike? I could easily picture someone walking into a dimly lit bedroom and mistaking Marian for Stacy.

Or mistaking Stacy for Marian.

Mrs. Vincenzo finished brushing her hair and grinned.

“Have fun tonight, honey,” she said, and headed out the door.

I clutched the sink for support. Waves of nausea were churning at the back of my throat.

A horrible scenario had begun to spin itself out in my mind.

What if Cameron was the killer? But what if he’d killed the wrong person? What if it was Marian he’d meant to kill, and not Stacy? After all, he’d been away in San Francisco for a month. He’d have no way of knowing that Marian had already died and that Stacy had moved into her apartment.

So he comes down to Los Angeles and parks his Jeep down the street so that no one in the building will realize he’s there. Then he lets himself into Marian’s apartment, with a key she’d no doubt given him.

The living room is dark, and he doesn’t notice the furniture’s changed. Besides, he’s not thinking about furniture. He’s got more important things on his mind. Quietly, he slips down the corridor to the bedroom. There he sees Stacy asleep, her back toward him, her blond hair splayed out on her pillow. In the dark, her hair looks just like Marian’s. He sees the ThighMaster on the floor. The perfect murder weapon. He naturally assumes it’s Marian’s. She was proud of her body and liked to work out. So he picks up the bulky piece of metal and bludgeons Stacy to death—only to discover when he’s done that he’s killed the wrong woman.

But why? Why would Cameron have killed Marian? He seemed genuinely fond of her.

I had no idea why the man of my dreams would have beaten the life out of a faded starlet.

But he did. Of that, I was certain.

Which is why I spent the next fifteen minutes bent over a toilet bowl at the Shalom Retirement Home, puking my guts out.

Eventually I managed to pry myself away from the toilet bowl and drive back to my apartment.

No way was I going to keep my date with Cameron. I’d call him and tell him I wasn’t feeling well—which was no lie. My stomach was growling, and my head was pounding. As soon as I got home, I collapsed on the sofa with a package of frozen peas on my forehead and Prozac on my belly.

Don’t ask me how I knew with such utter certainty that Cameron was the killer. I just did. I’d been an idiot to fall for him. I should have known he wasn’t really interested in me. There is an unwritten rule of mating, as far as I’m concerned: Beautiful People want Beautiful People. They rarely wind up with Commoners. Mel Gibson does not date Kathy Bates.

I could see now that Cameron had been dating me to keep tabs on me. Once he realized I was investigating the murder, he wanted to make sure I didn’t discover the truth.

Yes, I was convinced Cameron was a killer. What I couldn’t figure out was why?

What possible reason could Cameron have for wanting to kill Marian? A crime of passion? Hardly. And it couldn’t have been money. She didn’t leave him anything in her will, except for that framed photo of herself. Not exactly a windfall. The picture was probably worth six bucks, maximum, to a Hollywood trivia collector.

The phone rang. Too exhausted to move, I let the machine get it.

“Hi, Jaine. It’s me.” His voice sounded boyish. Innocent. “Just calling to see where you were. I thought you’d be here by now. Oh, well. I guess you’re on your way.”

Fat chance.

I stayed right where I was on the sofa, stroking Prozac and staring at the ceiling. After a while, my frozen peas started melting. I reached over to put them on the coffee table and grabbed a magazine to use as a coaster.

And that’s when everything started to make sense.

Because the magazine I grabbed wasn’t a magazine, but the catalogue from Christie’s auction house.

Suddenly I remembered the picture of Cary Grant. The one that sold for $123,000. Something about it had looked familiar at the time. And now I knew what it was: the frame.
It was the frame that Marian had left Cameron in her will.

Flinging the peas on the carpet, I started rifling through the pages of the catalogue until I found the photo of Cary Grant. Sure enough, it was in the same frame that had held Marian’s picture.

Another scenario began forming in my mind:

A has-been actress owns a very valuable frame. Maybe it was given to her by a wealthy lover. She probably doesn’t even realize how much it’s worth. But then she meets a charming young antiques dealer who takes one look at the frame and knows it’s a gold mine. He doesn’t tell her, of course. Instead, he befriends her and gets her to leave it to him in her will, as a sentimental memento.

Maybe at first he’s not even thinking of murder. But then things get tough for him financially. His antiques shop is having a dry spell. And he needs cash badly. So he devises a plot to kill her, only he winds up killing the wrong blonde.

It all made perfect sense. Just that very afternoon, hadn’t Cameron told me how he’d come into money, as a result of a big “sale”?

I reached for the phone and put in a call to Detective Rea. He was gone for the day, but I told the sergeant on duty to track him down and have him call me back as soon as possible.

I hung up, my nerves totally shot. I looked around my apartment and suddenly I knew I didn’t want to spend the night there, alone, with nothing for protection but a cat with a compulsive eating problem. So I called Kandi, and asked if I could spend the night at her place. She said sure, fine, and asked if I’d mind picking up some Häagen-Dazs French Vanilla on my way over.

I hung up and started throwing things into my gym bag. I hadn’t gotten very far when the phone rang. I leapt at it eagerly.

“Detective Rea?”

“No. It’s Cameron.”

Oh, God. I’d blundered. Badly.

“Hi, Cameron.” I strained to keep the fear out of my voice. “I was expecting a call from Detective Rea. I wanted to talk to him about Daryush. I really think he’s our killer.”

“Can’t you forget about the murder for one night?” he sighed. “I thought you were coming over for some hugging and munching.”

He sounded sweet. Sexy. Utterly innocent. So why were the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end?

“Cameron, I can’t. I’m feeling terrible. Must have been something I ate. I’ve been throwing up all night.”

“Let me come to your place and take care of you.”

“No!” I shouted. “I mean, no…I’ll be fine. Really.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Make yourself some chicken soup.”

“I will.”

“I miss you.”

“Me too,” I managed to choke out. “But I better go now. I think I’m going to be sick again.” Which wasn’t far from the truth.

I hung up, bathed in sweat. I only hoped he believed my cock-and-bull story about Daryush. More than ever, I wanted to get out of my apartment. I threw some pajamas into my gym bag, along with a toothbrush and an ancient bottle of Valium left over from my divorce.