A Corpse in the Soup (29 page)

Goldie, someone’s out there!

Godiva could hear a sweet childish singsong that accompanied the taps on the window. “Hello! Is anybody there?”

Lenny froze, the knifepoint sliding along Chris’ chin. He snarled a warning for them all to be quiet. The rat-a-tat-tat-tat on the glass sounded again. “Is Chris in there? Do I have the right door?”

Godiva watched in awe as Wesley metamorphosed into Chris again. “Candy! Get away! Call the police!” He was shouting and squeaking at the same time.

The knife blade left a bloody track across Chris’ chin. “Don’t kill me!” he screamed. “I’m the one who gave you the story...”

“Shut up, you pissant!”

Lenny’s eyes opened in wild surprise as a heavy terra cotta planter filled with pink geraniums crashed through the living room window. A furious Candy Vanderloop followed close behind. “Don’t you dare hurt my Chrissy,” she shouted.

A stiletto heel connected with Lenny’s face. He bellowed in rage and let go of Chris to clutch at the jagged wound. He saw Candy looming before him and swung the knife in her direction. A quick chop to his wrist sent the knife clattering to the floor.

Chris grabbed the knife and scooted behind a shabby armchair where he crouched in fear and awe.

Lenny snorted like a wild bull and charged Candy, grabbing her by the hair. “So, you wanta play rough?” she squeaked as she swung her leg backward and kicked him in the crotch. He let go of her hair and doubled over with a howl of pain.

Candy whipped around, “Ayyiahh!” With one blow to some invisible pressure point, Lenny lay silent on the floor.

Chris and Godiva looked as if they had just witnessed an alien invasion.

Candy huffed a sigh, fluffed her hair, then gave them a little Betty Boop smile. “I was bringing Chrissy his note pad. He forgot it in the car.” She looked down at Lenny and shrugged. “Black belt...comes in handy sometimes.”

CHAPTER 49

“Wow!” Chris threw his hands in the air. “You are awesome. I’ll never call you Candyass again.” Candy shrugged as she sat on Lenny’s butt, holding his limp arms behind him.

“Do you realize you just saved our lives? I thought you were a fragile flower...turns out you’re really a Venus Flytrap.”

“Oh, Chrissy.” Candy giggled.

Godiva tried to scoot across the floor by rocking the chair, but only succeeded in having the whole thing topple over as she landed face down with the chair on top of her.
Damn it.
There went one of my nails...God, I hope my nose isn’t broken...

From inside the closet Goldie’s muffled voice punctuated the sudden silence. “What’s happening? Get me out of here!” Staccato blows rained against the solid door as she tried to get out.

Chris recovered from the shock of the Karate Queen’s impressive attack, reached for the duct tape Lenny had tossed on the counter and threw it into Candy’s waiting hands. Without wasting a second she began trussing Lenny up like a Thanksgiving turkey. As she finished taping his ankles together, he began to stir.

“Oh Chrissy, now what do we do with him?”

Seeing the open pantry door, he said, “Let’s shove him in there and shut the door.” They dragged the squirming writer into the tiny room off the kitchen, wedged him in between the shelves full of beans and tuna and slammed the narrow door. They could hear a tirade of stifled swear words as cans and boxes fell around him.

“Mmmmhhhh.” Godiva’s shock had worn off. Her ass was up in the air covered by the chair, her face was pressed against the cold dirty linoleum, blood trickling from her nose and cheek, her pantsuit was completely ruined and she had at least three broken nails. What a disaster.

In a flash, Chris knelt down by her side. “You’re bleeding, are you all right?” He snatched the abandoned weapon and used it to cut her free. When the tape was peeled from her mouth she let loose a scream that could be heard all the way to Malibu.

Goldie’s frustrated shouts filtered through the closet door as she threw herself against it. “Is Godiva okay? What’s taking so long, let me out of here!”

A frantic Candy had pushed the cabinet away from the closet door and was on her hands and knees scouring the rug. “Hold on, hold on, I can’t find the key. It must be here somewhere.” A glint of bronze nestled in newspaper clippings beneath the coffee table caught her eye. “Yes!”

After struggling to turn the key, Candy yanked the door open and a very disheveled Goldie tumbled out. Her face turned blank white as she saw her battered and bruised twin holding a wet towel to her face. Chris was standing beside her in the devastated kitchen with a trickle of blood winding down the side of his neck, depositing small red droplets on the filthy floor. The living room was full of broken glass and overturned furniture.

When Candy looked over at Chris and realized he was wounded, she started to cry and wipe the blood away. “He hurt you, Chrissy. I’m sure glad I decided to bring you this.” She picked his yellow note pad up from the floor. “You left this in the car. I thought it would make you look more important. For your neg-negotiations.” She sobbed into his shoulder.

Godiva peered into the dusty mirror over the dining room buffet. “Oh God! Look at me!” The tape had been brutal to her pampered skin and her nose was badly bruised but she didn’t think it was broken. Even so, it might call for a visit to a plastic surgeon.

Candy found some Vaseline lotion on the counter and rubbed it on the raw spots around Godiva’s mouth. Chris found Band Aids in the bathroom and stuck several of them haphazardly along his chinline and on Godiva’s bleeding cheek. Goldie filled a towel with ice from the freezer and held it to her sister’s nose.

A new volley of obscenities came from the pantry and Goldie decided it was time to take charge. She dug around in her purse and held out a rumpled business card. “Chris, here’s the direct number for Lieutenant Adams. You need to call her and tell her who you are. Get her over here right now so she can take credit for arresting the killer. She’ll flip when she finds out it’s not Caesar.”

Candy wrapped herself around Chris, dabbing his face with a paper towel while he pressed the receiver to his ear waiting for the police detective to answer.

“Lieutenant Adams? This is Wesley Wellington...” they heard loud exclamations from the other end, “That’s right...Biff Wellington’s son.” He held the phone away from his ear as the voice went up a few decibels.

“Please listen to me, Lieutenant Adams. We’ve got my father’s killer trussed up and locked in his own pantry. He’s a maniac, you need to come get him.”

More noise from the phone. “Well, see, he tried to kill me, and if I hadn’t come along he would have killed Ms. DuBois and her sister. Yeah, that’s them. They’re okay, I think, but one of them might have a broken nose.” He ‘Um hmmmed’ a few times and continued. “We’d have all been dead if Candy hadn’t busted out the window and knocked the guy cold. That’s right, black belt. Yeah, you should’ve seen it. Anyway, we’d like to hand this nutcase over to you. Here’s the address. He’s swearing up a storm in that pantry, knockin’ cans off the shelf. We’ll all be waiting here for you.” He glanced at Godiva, and then down at his bloody shirt, “Hey, we probably need a medic, while you’re at it.”

Chris enveloped Candy in a fierce hug as he handed the phone to Goldie, who immediately called Caesar to let him know he was off the hook. She told him the whole story and promised Godiva would see him the following day. She knew her sister certainly wouldn’t want to see Caesar before her cosmetologist had repaired some of the damage.

Sirens blaring, Lieutenant Adams and Officer Neiderlander finally pulled up to the curb, bounded up the stairs and entered Lenny’s apartment, eyeballing the broken window and devastated living room. An emergency vehicle accompanied the police car and two EMTs blasted in behind them looking for the casualties. They seemed almost disappointed to find only a bruised but unbroken nose and cuts that required simple dressings.

It took all of Officer Neiderlander’s two hundred thirty-two pounds to haul Lenny out of the pantry and subdue him enough for Lieutenant Adams to arrest him properly. And even then Nathan was hit in the head with two cans of Rosarita refried beans before the suspect was finally in custody. Godiva made a mental note to send Angel and her boyfriend out to dinner on her tab.

Lt. Adams riveted her laser beam eyes on Goldie and Godiva. “Well, well, pretty proud of yourselves, aren’t you? I don’t suppose it occurred to you that people can get themselves killed playing detective. You’ve done a great service for the LAPD, and I must thank you for that, but I’ll tell you, Ms. DuBois, those letters to G.O.D. could have ended up in the dead letter file if your friend, Xena the Warrior,” she crooked her thumb toward Candy, “hadn’t saved your butts.”

Candy waved away the compliment. “I’m really not very brave, you know, but I couldn’t let him kill my Chrissy.”

She turned to Chris and Candy. “You two still didn’t tell me what you were doing here. How did you know these women were being held captive?”

Chris snapped out of his trance, “That’s the funny thing, we had no idea they were here. Their car isn’t even parked outside. I was going to ask Mr. Rodriguez for a fair share...he stole my story for that script, see? I didn’t know the guy was a friggin’ maniac. I left Candy in the car because I was afraid the language might get rough. I thought she was a delicate little thing.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Man, was I wrong.”

Lieutenant Adams stared at the twins again, “It might interest you two to know that I got this call today from a gentleman claiming to be your uncle. He said that your mother and he were the old cleaning people that everyone was looking for. Said his nieces had gone off looking for Wesley Wellington and hadn’t been heard from since. He seemed very distraught, wanted us to put out an APB on you two.”

A look flashed between the twins and Goldie picked up the ball. “Uncle Sterling...the cleaning man? He must be hallucinating. The old dear lives on my sister’s estate in Beverly Hills. So does my Mom. They’re eighty years old, f’chrissake! Can you imagine them cleaning someone’s office? I guess poor Uncle Sterling has finally gone ’round the bend.”

“Well, maybe so, but he was right about your being in danger. Even if he could have given us useful information, by the time we found you, you might have been mincemeat.”

CHAPTER 50

They invited Candy and Chris to join them for dinner before Goldie returned to Alaska. Caesar prepared a mouth-watering feast of
Pâte de Fois Gras
with figs and mixed greens as an appetizer, grilled lobster with Serrano chili butter accompanied by a delicate rice pilaf with saffron, and a Linzer Torte for dessert.

Godiva tapped her knife against her crystal goblet. “I have an announcement.” Everyone kept talking. She tapped again and the buzz died down.

“You’ll be happy to know that none of you will have to open my mail any more. I’ve hired Angel to be my assistant and she starts on Monday.” There was a little ripple of applause. Godiva leaned back with a self-satisfied smile, “Poor girl! She actually thinks this will be a better job than the
Times
. Of course the pay will be much better, so she can take Nathan out to Café Pinot in her brand new company car.”

Sterling lifted his glass. “
Mazeltov
. Here’s a toast to G.O.D.’s little Angel and to our freedom!”

Flossie piped up. “Everything happens according to a cosmic plan. Isn’t that what I always say, girls? Do you realize if Sterling and I hadn’t gone snooping around Wellington’s office that day, Chris never would have noticed the second janitor coming in after us.” She waited for them to heap praise on her.

Instead Goldie shook her head. “That’s all well and good, Mom, but aside from breaking and entering...
and
withholding evidence, the two of you almost wound up as suspects.”

“Oh pish! We didn’t break in. Everything was already unlocked.” Flossie pouted and took a sip of her wine.

Sterling turned to Caesar, Serrano chili butter dripping off his moustache. “See what they do to us, Caesar? They can’t admit that sometimes us old folks are useful. The reason you’re free as a bird today is because Flossie and I found that letter and it started the ball rolling.”

His sister in-law gave him the evil eye. “
We
found the letter, Sterling? What’s this ‘
we
’? Instead you should say:
Oy
! It was such a
mitzvah...
a real blessing
...
that Flossie thought to grab the garbage and remembered to look through it later.”

Sterling rolled his eyes. “See what I go through!”

Goldie swallowed a wee bit of Sauvignon Blanc. “Man, what a month. I can’t wait to get home to the peace and quiet of Juneau.” She dipped a forkful of lobster in the butter. “All I wanted was a quiet buying trip. Instead, my sister gets poisoned, then dates the guy who poisoned her, who hires my daughter...” she ticked the items off on her fingers, “...then he gets arrested for killing his rival, we try to help out and almost get carved up by a wacko writer and our savior is a sweet little girl who turns out to be a kamikaze Black Belt. This could only happen in L.A.”

Godiva smiled, “Look on the bright side, Sis. Your daughter’s a TV star and I wound up with a handsome guy who can cook!” She shot a broad smile at Caesar. “And we have two great new friends.”

“Not just friends,” said Flossie as she got up and walked around the table to give Candy a hug. “But honorary family. After all, if it wasn’t for Candy’s fancy footwork we wouldn’t be sitting here celebrating tonight.”

Sterling raised his glass again. “Here’s to Candy.” Everyone joined in the toast.

Goldie swallowed hard thinking about all the love she had given Chili over the years and how little Candy and Chris must have gotten. She looked around the table at all the dear faces from young and shiny to lined and worn. “I’ll miss all of you. While Rudy and I are sorting through the new shipment I’ll watch all the cooking shows on TV and cheer for my two best girls, Chili and Candy. I’ll tell Grandma Belle all about you, Candy, and she’ll cheer for you, too.”