Drop Dead Gorgeous (3 page)

“How sad, how horrible!” Lori said.

Jan shook her head again.

“Had you seen her lately?” Lori asked.

“Oh
…
a few times—over fifteen years,” Jan said. “She married, divorced, married, divorced. She split from the last guy about a year ago—I’ll bet the police are going to question him. He was kind of a character, I think. But then again, so was she.”

“How so? I don’t remember.”

“Well, she was kind of like Mandy. She could be outrageous. She was always nice, but she was written up once for dancing naked in a fountain, and she was arrested once on a DUI. I think she was kind of living life in the fast lane, you know, looking for something she couldn’t quite find. But,” Jan added wryly, “aren’t we all?”

“It’s still terrible. I don’t care how fast she was living—no one deserves to be murdered,” Lori murmured. Suddenly, she remembered Eleanor clearly.
She’d come to the rock pit with Mandy, that last day when they’d all been together. She could remember how she’d looked in her bikini, laughing, running off with Mandy toward the water. Then, later, with the rest of them
…

When Mandy had been dragged up and Sean had been bent over her, desperately trying CPR,
except that the cops had been convinced that
…

“You’re right,” Jan said with a long sigh. “It’s sad and terrible, and I sure hope they get the guy. I didn’t mean that Eleanor deserved it or anything like that. It’s just that a fast lifestyle can get you into trouble with guys you don’t know, and these days it's kind of like anyone can be a homicidal maniac. Though, I admit, I used to like that club, but I guarantee you, I won’t be there for a while!”

“You’re going to stay home and be an angel?”

“For a while. Well, I’m going to stay home— or away from clubs and nights out on the town. Maybe I’ll give Brad a call and see what he’s up to for the next few weekends.”

Despite the circumstances, Lori grinned. “Ah! Knowing what kind of monsters are out there makes the old husband look good, eh?” Lori arched a brow at Jan.

“Well, he’s an ex-husband, remember. But a woman does have her needs, so maybe I will be nice to him for a while now,” she murmured. “Scary stuff.”

A shriek from downstairs caused them both to freeze and stare at one another. Lori pelted to the door and down the stairs, Jan at her heels. Her heart was hammering as she wondered what could have happened.

She jammed to a stop at the bottom of the stairs; Jan crashed into her.

Tina was sitting on the sofa while Brendan was going through a box of CDs, Tina shrieking with laughter. She looked at Lori and her mother with surprise, then apologized quickly.

“Oh, I’m sorry, he was just telling me that he loves the Monkees! The Monkees, can you imagine?”

Lori sagged against the stairs.

Brendan looked up at his mother. She was relieved to see that he was happy, enjoying Tina. What wasn’t to enjoy? The girl was as pretty as could be and nice as well.

“She’s got no taste, Mom. Sorry, Mrs. Jackson.”

“The Monkees?” Jan said, sniffing and staring at Lori in defense of her daughter. “And I go by my maiden name, Hunt, Brendan, except you can just call me Jan.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Brendan said politely. “Mom, I’m really starved,” he added. “Are we possibly going to get something to eat sometime soon?”

“Of course,” Lori said, looking at Jan. It seemed a little absurd now that Tina’s shrieks of laughter had sent them into such a wild panic. They looked at one another somewhat sheepishly, in silent agreement that in front of the kids they would put the murder of an old acquaintance behind them. Even if it made both of them feel uneasy as hell.

“Yeah, dinner, my treat,” Jan said, looking from Lori to Brendan, and back to Lori again. She forced a grin as she cheerfully added, “I did make a nice commission on this place!”

“Hey, fine, you can treat. Where are we going?” Lori asked.

“Coconut Grove. A great little Italian place,
new since you’ve been here.” Lori noticed that Tina elbowed Brendan—she had obviously known where they were going, and she wasn’t displeased.

“Hey,” Jan continued, “I’m treating, but I think we should take both cars. You and Brendan might want to hang around awhile, and I have to pick up a contract if the old geezer gets around to signing it. Things have changed, though, in the past fifteen years. Wait till you see how much!”

“All right. Let me just go up and grab my purse,” Lori said absently.

Jan followed her upstairs. “Lori?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re acting weird. Are you all right with this?”

Lori took her purse off the bed and headed back to the doorway, frowning. “I’m not acting weird.”

“You looked white when I was talking about dinner.”

“Oh
…
well, I guess I couldn’t stop thinking about Eleanor.”

“I know, but it’s not like either of us was really still friends with her. You hadn’t seen her in fifteen years, and I’d seen her maybe three or four times.”

“Still…
”

“Lori, we just can’t take everything to heart. You always hurt for everybody else all the time, but you should have learned by now, you just can’t do that. Life’s a bitch.”

“And then you die yourself?” Lori queried, using the
cliché
dryly.

“Right. Bad things happen. Lots of kids we went to school with are dead. Petey Fitzhugh finally passed away from his hemophilia
. Larry Gonzalez died at twenty-
seven from cancer. That’s the way it goes.”

“Ellie was murdered,” Lori reminded her.

They stared at one another. Lori thought that maybe they were both about to say,
“So was Mandy
!
”

But neither of them said the words. They hung there on the air between them, like a miasma. But then, way back when, the kids would never have thought that Mandy had been
murdered
that day; it was the cops who believed that she had been, the D.A.’s office who had come up with the charges.

“Mom!” Brendan called.

It was a mournful sound. The kid was starving. Jan was right. She couldn’t bleed for every evil thing that happened in the universe.

“He must be really hungry—we didn’t go shopping yet. I’ve got milk, coffee, orange juice, and sodas, and that’s it. Let’s get going.”

“Right, let’s get going,” Jan agreed.

“Except—” Lori murmured.

“Except?”

“Except, are we safe?” she murmured softly.

Jan sighed. “Ho
ney, where we’re going is wall-
to-wall tourists. Great. You don’t want to move down here and get paranoid right away!
I even let Tina hang around the Grove with her friends on weekends, as long as they stick to the main drag. Lots of cops on the streets all the time. Ellie was snatched from a South Beach club where she was probably trying to pick up guys.”

“I guess I’m just spooked,” Lori said. But as they exited the house, she thought that a good alarm system was going to be her first investment.

Spooked. That was it. She’d lived in greater Miami, London, and New York. All big cities. Places you learned to be street-smart, places where murder did happen far too frequently. There wasn’t anything astonishing about a murder in Miami.

Except that
…

The victim had been an old friend of hers.

Old friend, yes, old friend, someone she hadn’t seen in fifteen years. She had to let it go
…

She didn’t think that she could, but then, getting out was good. Driving down familiar streets that weren’t quite so familiar anymore took Lori’s mind from what had happened to Ellie.

Things
had
changed. Coconut Grove had gotten busy—really busy, even on a Monday night.

The area had always been trendy; it remained so with artsy shops mixed in with larger, popular chain stores. She couldn’t get over all the new construction in the area, the multitude of cars—and people. Tour buses were parked
on Main Street in front of a Planet Hollywood. She might have been back in New York, there were so many languages being spoken.

The Italian restaurant Jan had chosen was small and apparently very good because it was full. Music played from another place across the street, car horns honked as people tried to get through the congested streets, and as they waited for their table, they had to speak up to be heard by one another. Once they were seated, Jan introduced Lori to everyone who worked in the restaurant who happened to pass them by. This turned out to be good, because Ja
n’s beeper went off almost imme
diately and she disappeared to make a phone call, then returned and apologized, but prepared to leave them.

“Tina, I’ll take you home,” Jan said.

“Mom can take her,” Brendan protested.

“If she doesn’t mind,” Tina said sweetly.

“But, Tina, you told me you had lots of homework and a million things to do after dinner tonight—”

“I think I’ll be okay if I stay out a little later,” Tina said, flushing slightly.

Lori quickly lowered her head, hiding her smile. Tina had been afraid that Brendan Corcoran might be a weird kid, or a dork, and naturally—at her mother’s insistence—she had agreed to come and welcome him and be polite. Then she had discovered that he was cute and charming.

“I’ll be happy to get her home, and we
won’t be late,” Lori assured Jan. “Look at everything you’ve done for me.”

“I sold you a house.”

“And sat around for furniture to be delivered and cable installed and all kinds of hideously mundane things!” Lori reminded her.

“All right, then. Ciao, guys!” Jan said, and breezed on out.

The food was delicious, the service was superb, but by the time they had finished eating, Lori had acquired a pounding headache. Tina was telling Brendan about the various shops in the two malls and about some of the different places down Main Street and off into the side roads.

“Hey,” she protested, “I know you two would probably like to walk around a bit, and I’m sorry, but honestly, I’m really exhausted.”

“Can I just run into the big bookstore at the Mayfair?” Brendan asked, hazel eyes anxiously on hers. “Tina says that Michael Shayne was down here, and he left autographed copies of his latest at the store.”

“We can come back—”

“They won’t last,” Brendan said, staring at her.

She sighed. She was vaguely familiar with the name. She loved to read when she had the time, though Michael Shayne was a little on the gruesome side for her. Still, she was glad that Brendan liked to read so much, and she always encouraged his interest in books. “All right. Go on down and—”

“There’s a coffee bar in the bookstore. Maybe we could have ten minutes and you could meet us there?” Tina asked hopefully.

She smiled. It was a Monday night, a school night—for other kids, even if Brendan wasn’t starting right away. There probably wouldn’t be too many kids hanging around now, but she sensed that maybe Tina knew a few of her friends might be in the area seeing movies, shopping—or hanging out at the hamburger joint on Main Street. “You can have fifteen minutes, how’s that? But really, Brendan—”

“Fifteen minutes. We’ll be ready,” Brendan promised.

The kids left. Lori discovered that Jan had paid the bill before taking off, so she thanked the staff and left. Threading her way through the surprisingly crowded streets, she headed toward the Mayfair and the bookstore. The mall was big, encompassing a hotel and dozens of shops with a courtyard between split sections of the edifice. The restaurant had been closer to Cocowalk, a second mall in the area. The night was nice, though, and walking along, she realized the scope of the place. Greater Miami, encompassing all the little municipalities, was big and densely populated. Somewhere around three million people. Constantly changing and growing. She hadn’t seen a soul or a single thing she actually recognized. She’d come home, but home was different. She could relax.

Yeah, home was different. Eleanor had been murdered.

Suddenly, as she walked, the street and
shop lights around her went out. She heard shouts, cars crashing into fender benders, alarms ringing.

An area blackout, don’t panic! common sense told
her. She heard a policeman curs
ing, and auxiliary lights began blinking on here and there.

Yet she suddenly felt a sense of alarm.
Brendan.
If anything happened to Brendan, she would die. She began to run.

In the shadows cast by a pale moon, she turned into the courtyard area of the mall, jogging swiftly up a few steps just in time to plow into another human being coming from the opposite direction. Their impact was such that she staggered back, nearly falling. Strong arms reached out for her in the gloom, steadying her. She didn’t fall. Neither could she move.

Clouds moved over the moon. It was darker than ever.

It occurred to her that Coconut Grove could be a rough place. This guy was big, powerful. In the distance she could hear shouting. Nearby, there seemed to be nothing, and no one.