Death by Tiara (17 page)

I shot him the look Prozac uses on me when she’s angling for a belly rub, all soft and gooey and Damsel in Distress.

“Oh, okay,” he conceded. “But just a few minutes.”

I followed him inside, past a living room decorated in peaches and pale green (a perfect setting for Candace’s cool good looks), into a wood-paneled den.

Unlike the light and bright living room, the den was clearly Eddie’s domain. Dark and gloomy, the room reeked of cigarettes. Piles of papers were scattered on a scarred wooden desk, while an ancient TV sat hulking across from a cracked leather sofa and rumpsprung oatmeal recliner.

All very Early Archie Bunker.

The walls were lined with show-biz head shots and publicity stills of Candace and Eddie in their bygone days as aspiring actors. Among the photos was a community theater poster of Candace as Blanche DuBois in
A Streetcar Named Desire
. And another of Eddie as Ebenezer Scrooge in
A Christmas Carol
.

“Have a seat,” Eddie said, gesturing to the sofa.

I sat down, and as I did, tufts of stuffing came popping out from the cracks in the leather. Surreptitiously I tried to shove them back in.

But Eddie didn’t even notice. He was staring at the photos on the wall, lost in his memories.

“Those were good times,” he said, pointing with pride to a head shot of a much younger version of himself, beaming out at the world with an unlined face and a headful of long-gone hair.

“That’s me when I was opening for Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme in Vegas. Best six weeks of my life,” he said, gazing at the photo with longing.

“Candy and I both started out trying to make it big in show biz. Candy got a couple of commercials and I got some stand-up gigs. But neither one of us really took off,” he said, plopping down on the recliner. “So Candy started this pageant thing, and I went along for the ride. It’s been fun for her.”

“And you?”

“Not so much. But it’s the only game in town,” he shrugged. “So what can I do?”

Kill your wife for the insurance money?
I asked myself, wondering if indeed the Burkes had life insurance policies.

“Steve Lawrence said I was the funniest comic he’d ever worked with,” Eddie said, his eyes growing misty at the memory.

Either Steve was an awfully kind fellow or he’d worked with some pretty lousy comics.

“If you’d like,” he said, “I can show you my press clippings.”

Yuck, no!

“Better yet, I think I’ve got a tape of my act somewhere!”

I’d rather suck sofa stuffing!

“Sounds great, Eddie. But I really need to talk to you about the murder before Candace comes home. I know how much she dislikes Heather, and I want to get an unbiased account of what happened from you.”

“Oh, don’t worry about Candace. She’s at her hypnotherapist’s. She’ll be gone for at least an hour.”

“But I promised I wouldn’t take up much of your time.”

“This won’t take long. And you’ll love it. Trust me. It’s hilarious.”

If you learn nothing else from this little story, class, learn this: Never trust a comic who tells you he’s hilarious.

Before I knew it, Eddie was shoving a tape in a beat-up VCR. And for the next twenty minutes, I sat there with a smile plastered on my face, forcing myself to chuckle at jokes that had been around since Henny Youngman was in diapers, praying Candace wouldn’t come walking in the front door.

At last the routine ground to a halt.

“Wonderful!” I exclaimed, frightened my face had frozen into a permanent grin. “But now, about the unfortunate incident at the Amada Inn . . . ?”

“Oh, right,” he said, reluctantly returning to reality.

“Did you happen to see anyone near Candace’s office at the time of the murder?”

“No, I was in my room rehearsing my material for the crowning ceremony.”

So much for an airtight alibi. For all I knew, he was tiptoeing down the hallway to bludgeon his wife to death with a tiara.

“Can you think of anyone who would want to see Candace dead?” I asked.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I honestly can’t. I know Candace can be tough on the outside, but underneath, she has a heart of gold. She’s a kind, caring, philanthropic woman. Everyone who really knows her loves her.”

Spoken with all the warmth and emotion of a robot on downers.

If this was the best he could do as an actor, no wonder he never made it in show biz.

Somehow I had to jolt him out of his pre-written script.

So I took a deep breath and blurted out, “Did you know your wife was having an affair with Tex Turner?”

His face crumpled.

“Yes, I know,” he said with a resigned sigh. “It wasn’t her first, and it won’t be her last. But I didn’t try to kill her in a fit of passion if that’s what you’re thinking. If I was going to do that, I would’ve done it years ago.”

The stiffness had left his voice; the robot was gone.

At last, he seemed to be speaking the truth.

I thanked him for his time and got up to go. By now I was pretty much convinced he wasn’t the killer, and I was just about to cross him off my suspect list when my purse brushed against the mountain of papers on Eddie’s desk, sending them cascading to the floor.

“I’m so sorry!” I said. “How clumsy of me.”

Then suddenly I noticed something buried underneath the pile of paperwork—a black ski mask.

Right away I flashed back to Candace’s attacker, the one who jumped out at her from the bushes and came charging at her with a knife. According to Candace, he’d been wearing a ski mask.

Good heavens. Could Eddie have been her assailant?

“My ski mask!” Eddie cried. “I’ve been looking all over for this. It’s a souvenir of my one and only TV role, as Mobster Number Three in a very bad cop show.

“C’mere,” he said, taking me by the elbow and leading me over to a photo on the wall—a still shot of three hoodlums in a dark alley.

“That’s me!” He pointed to one of the hoodlums, a stocky guy dressed in black and wearing a ski mask.

“I thought I’d lost this baby,” he said, dusting off the mask. “I’ve really got to clean my desk more often.”

As we bent down to pick up the scattered paper, I was beginning to wonder if Eddie was a lot better an actor than I’d thought. Was that ski mask of his just a souvenir? Or had he reprised his role as Mobster Number Three and slipped it on to stab his cheating wife to death?

We’d just finished piling the papers back on Eddie’s desk when I heard someone coming in the front door.

“I’m back!” Candace called out.

Frankly, I was relieved to hear her, glad I was no longer alone with her possible killer.

But when she walked into the den, I barely recognized her. Her face was blotchy; her hair no longer shiny and sculpted, but hanging limp on her shoulders. Dressed in sloppy sweats, she was a ghost of her former self.

“How’d the hypnotherapy go?” Eddie asked.

“Hypnotherapy?” Candace blinked, dazed. “It went okay, I guess. The doctor said he put me under, but I swear I was awake the whole time. If I don’t sleep tonight, I’m going back on Valium.”

“Candace hasn’t been sleeping well,” Eddie explained. “She keeps blaming herself for Amy’s death.”

“Of course I blame myself for her death. If I hadn’t spilled that Coke on Amy’s blazer, she wouldn’t have been wearing mine, and the killer never would have mistaken her for me.

“What’s she doing here?” she then asked, nodding in my direction.

“Jaine came to ask some questions about the murder.”

Candace turned to me with weary eyes.

“What’re you—some sort of PI?”

“Unbelievable, right?” Eddie piped up.

“A lot more believable than your crummy toupee,” were the words I yearned to utter.

“But I heard you were a songwriter,” Candace said.

“I write all sorts of things. I do advertising, resumes, industrial films—”

“Yeah, right. Skip the sales pitch. Why are you so interested in the murder?”

“Heather Van Sant has hired me to help clear her name. She insists she never tried to kill you. And I believe her.”

“You know what?” Candace said, slumping down onto the rumpsprung sofa. “You could be right. At first I was sure Heather was the killer. But now, I don’t know. Anyone could have done it. Someone out there is trying to kill me and I have no idea who it is.”

She put her head in her hands and choked back what sounded like a sob. Then, in a frightened voice, she said: “I think someone’s been following me.”

“What?” Eddie cried, alarmed.

“A van’s been on my tail the past few days.”

“What kind of van?”

“I don’t know. It was big. And black.”

“Are you sure you’re not just being paranoid?” Eddie asked.

“I’m not being paranoid. Someone’s been following me! What on earth am I going to do?”

I glanced over at the ski mask perched on Eddie’s desk.

For starters, I felt like telling her, try sleeping in separate bedrooms. Better yet, separate states.

“Don’t worry, honey,” Eddie said, putting his arm around her. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

“Just like it was the other night when the killer came at me with that knife?”

Was it my imagination or did I see Eddie blush?

“I should’ve never let you out alone at night,” he said. “And it’s not going to happen again. I’m going to hire a bodyguard to protect you whenever you leave the house.”

That was all very well and good, but who was going to protect her when she was alone with Eddie?

Chapter 20

I
took off from Alta Loco, haunted by the memory of that ski mask, and wondering if Eddie had indeed flipped out and tried to kill Candace. He had absolutely no alibi for the time of the murder. According to him, he’d been in his room working on material for the pageant crowning ceremony. Since Eddie seemed to lift his material directly from
1,000 Jokes for Any Occasion
, I hardly saw the need for much preparation.

But Eddie wasn’t my only suspect without an alibi. Neither Bethenny nor Tex had witnesses to their whereabouts at the time of the crime. Had Bethenny really been giving herself a facial as she’d claimed? Had Tex really been spying on his employees?

Those were the thoughts swirling around my brain as I slogged through traffic—that, and whether to stop off at McDonald’s or KFC for lunch.

KFC won out, and one mini-bucket of chicken bites later, I was driving over to Pet Palace. In my latest foray in the DVD Armoire Wars, I’d decided to buy Prozac a scratching post. Surely once she got her paws on a pole of thick, plush carpeting, she’d lose interest in my armoire.

After surveying various models, I decided to go for broke and spent way too much money on something called a Kitty Condo, a multi-tiered structure with platforms and ladders, and three carpeted beds, one in turquoise referred to as “the pool.”

Lowell, my helpful Pet Palace clerk, rang up my sale, and asked if I’d care to pay thirty dollars extra for assembly. I assured him that I was perfectly capable of assembling a simple Kitty Condo and headed home.

A half hour later, I was sitting on my living room floor, surrounded by assorted Kitty Condo parts, cursing in languages I didn’t even know I knew.

The diabolical fiends at Kitty Condo were sadists of the highest order, providing their unsuspecting customers with instructions so indecipherable, they may as well have been written in Sanskrit. What’s worse, they had the gall to leave out steps four, six, and twelve in their “Easy Seventeen-Step Assembly.”

Somebody ought to report those people to the Better Business Bureau.

(But I’m busy right now writing this book, so you do it, okay?)

Thoroughly disgusted, I decided to take a chardonnay break.

I was sitting on my sofa, sipping some of Chateau Costco’s finest, when Lance showed up.

He sailed into my living room in a designer suit and tie, fresh from his job fondling ladies’ bunions at Neiman Marcus.

“Hi, sweetie. I just stopped by to tell you about my fantastic dinner date with Gary, the UPS guy. Is this a good time for you?”

“Not really.”

“Well,” he said, plopping down on the sofa, “we went to the most charming little Italian restaurant in Century City, Obika Mozzarella Bar. Mozzarella to die for! We shared a margarita pizza and a bottle of wine, and the rest was dating history. I swear, Gary looked so handsome, I hardly even noticed our stunning waiter.

“And how about you, hon? How are things with you and Detective Sublimely Wealthy?”

“Not so hot.”

“Oh, no!” he said, taking my hands in his. “Tell Uncle Lance everything! Spill your little heart out.”

And I did. I told him all about the Great Frisbee Fiasco. How Scott and I had been planning to drive up to Santa Barbara but had been hijacked to brunch at Hell House; how Chloe was waiting for us in her bikini; how I’d sprayed my hair with Cat-Away and stunk up the whole brunch; how I was stuck with Grammy Willis while Scott romped on the lawn playing Frisbee with Chloe; and how I accidentally bopped Pa Willis in the eye with the Frisbee and sent him to the hospital for stitches.

When I was through, Lance tsked in pity.

“Poor Jaine,” he said, gazing down at my hands, still clutched in his. “When’s the last time you had a manicure? Your nails are a wreck.”

“Did you not hear a word I just said? I sent Pa Willis to the hospital.”

“Of course I heard. Another Jaine date gone bad. So what else is new? If only you’d let me know before the date, I could’ve given you some pointers. Pointer Number One: Never spray your hair with cat repellent. It’s things like that, Jaine, that make it so hard to forge meaningful relationships in life.

“But don’t worry, sweetie. I’ll help you win Scott back. I’ll think of something. We’re going to have that double wedding in the Cotswolds if it’s the last thing I do!”

That spoken with all the fervor of Scarlett O’Hara vowing never to go hungry again.

I shuddered at the thought of what idiotic scheme he might come up with.

“Hey, what’s all this?” he said, finally noticing the Kitty Condo parts scattered behind the sofa.