Jaine Austen 2 - Last Writes (12 page)

Kandi wished me luck on my date with Wells and headed off to yet another emergency session with her shrink. If she kept this up, the guy was going to name a couch after her.

I drove home, stopping off at the supermarket to pick up tuna for Prozac. Bumblebee, packed in water. The most expensive stuff they’ve got. I told myself I was insane. I should have been buying cat food, or at the very least, Starkist, which was on sale two-for-one.

What can I say? I was blinded by guilt.

I headed for the checkout counter with twenty bucks worth of tuna in my cart. Not to mention a couple of cans of fancy Chinook salmon and a sackful of catnip. Remind me never to have kids; they’d be spoiled rotten before they ever made it out of the crib.

I was just pulling up in front of my duplex when I saw Lance coming out of his apartment. Quickly, I ducked down out of sight. I knew he’d ask me if I’d given
If The Shoe Fits
to Audrey, and I didn’t have the energy to lie about it.

I was crouched down, looking at the floor of my car, littered with ancient McDonald’s ketchup packets, when I heard:

“Hey, Jaine, what’re you doing down there?”

Damn. It was Lance.

“Hi,” I said, banging my head against the dashboard. “I dropped this.”

I held up one of the ketchup packets, grinning sheepishly.

“So?” Lance asked. “Did you give your boss my treatment?”

“No, not yet,” I said, hoisting myself up. “But I’ll give it to her tomorrow, I promise.”

“That’s great, Jaine. Really. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this. Not many people would be as generous as you.”

Oh, jeez. If he only knew the truth, that I’d come
thisclose
to tossing his treatment into the commissary dumpster.

“It’s nothing, Lance,” I said. “Really.”

“You’re a good friend,” he said, nodding solemnly. Then he waved good-bye and headed off to his car.

I sat staring at my ketchup packet, filled with guilt. Between Lance and Prozac, I’d generated enough of the stuff to fuel a convention of Jewish mothers.

What sort of a rat was I, anyway? What would be so horrible about giving Lance’s treatment to Audrey? So what if she didn’t like it? She couldn’t possibly hold me responsible for something Lance had written, could she?

I could always leave it on her desk anonymously. Yes, that’s what I’d do. That way, if she hated it, she couldn’t blame me.

I headed up the path to my apartment, feeling a lot better.

“Prozac, honey,” I called out as I let myself into my apartment, “look what Mommy brought. Tuna! Packed in water, just the way you like it.”

Prozac looked up from where she was pawing my new Donna Karan pantyhose.

“Prozac,” I wailed. “How could you? Do you realize how much those pantyhose cost?”

Prozac yawned in my face, devoid of remorse, clearly not giving a flying fig about my pantyhose.

“Well,” I huffed, “if you think I’m giving you Bumblebee white meat tuna, you’re sadly mistaken. It’s Friskies fishguts for you, young lady. And don’t go looking at me all wide-eyed and innocent. I’m not backing down. It’s high time I exercised a little discipline around here.”

I marched into the kitchen and opened a can of fishguts. Prozac wandered in, sniffed dismissively, and walked back out again.

“Don’t eat it,” I shouted after her. “See if I care.”

With that, I swept into the bedroom to get ready for my dinner date with Wells. Yes, indeed. It was time I showed that cat who was boss.

Fifteen minutes later, I was coiffed and spritzed and ready to go. I grabbed my car keys and was heading for the front door when Prozac came bounding over to my side. She looked up at me with enormous green eyes and rubbed against my ankles, the queen of adorable.

“I know what you’re up to,” I told her, “and it’s not going to work. I will not cave in. No Bumblebee, and I mean it.”

And you’ll be happy to know that I stuck to my word. I said I wouldn’t give her any tuna, and I didn’t. No way. Absolutely not.

I gave her the salmon instead.

La Petite Auberge was a tiny French bistro in Santa Monica, popular with the AARP crowd. Wells and I sat at a checkerboard-sized table, surrounded by seniors finishing their Early Bird Specials. Lots of old guys in plaid pants and white-haired ladies with loose jowls and tight perms.

It was the kind of place where dinners come with soup and salad and the beverage of your choice. Unfortunately they didn’t have the beverage of my choice: a double Beefeater martini on the rocks. So I settled for a watery French chardonnay.

When our waitress had taken our orders (
coq au vin
for Wells, duck
à l’orange
for me, and chocolate mousse for dessert), Wells turned to me and said: “So, Jaine. Tell me all about yourself.”

“Well—” I began. But I never made it to Syllable Two.

“You remind me so much of a young Joan Plowright,” Wells interrupted.

Joan Plowright? Wasn’t she the pudgy lady who always played somebody’s elderly aunt in Merchant-Ivory movies? Yikes, I told myself, I really had to go on a diet. Just as soon as I finished my duck
à l’orange
and chocolate mousse.

“I knew Joan back when she and I were starring in
All’s Well That Ends Well
at Stratford-upon-Avon. Oh, those were the days…!”

And he was off and running down memory lane. He talked his way through the soup and the salad and the duck and the coq. I heard all about his life in show biz, starting with the early days working as a magician in London. I heard how he got his first acting gig at the Old Vic, and how he went on to play all the major Shakespearean roles. I heard about how he and his dearly departed wife started their own repertory theater in Boise, Idaho, and how Larry Olivier said he was the best Macbeth he ever saw, and how he knew Judi Dench when she was knee high to a cricket wicket, and blah, blah, blah, blah, until my eyes were practically spinning in my head.

Every once in a while I tried to get in a word edge-wise, but it was a lost cause, like a guppy trying to impregnate a whale. Wells was in the middle of a story about playing Scrabble with Sir John “Goodie” Gielgud, when I let my mind wander back to the scene in the Miracle ladies’ room.

I remembered the murderous look in Audrey’s eyes when Vanessa said that a hatrack would be more fun in bed than Stan. Of course, I had to admit Vanessa was probably right. What with Stan’s prodigious liquor consumption, I had a hard time picturing him in the performing mode.

What the heck were Stan and Audrey doing together, anyway? Such an unlikely couple. But the world is full of unlikely couples. Why two people are attracted to each other is one of life’s great mysteries. A mystery almost as puzzling as how a two-ounce bag of potato chips can make me gain five pounds. I was sitting there, pondering these and other imponderables, and watching an old lady at the next table cram a half-dozen dinner rolls into her purse, when I became aware that Wells had finally shut up and was looking at me questioningly.

“Jaine?”

Oh, dear. He’d probably just asked me something, and I had no idea what it was.

“Sorry,” I said, with an apologetic smile. “I guess I drifted off a little.”

“That’s all right,” he said. “I don’t blame you. I’m afraid I’ve been talking too much. I do that a lot nowadays. Guess it comes from living alone.”

I knew exactly what he meant. If I didn’t have Prozac to talk to, I’d probably be telling strangers at bus stops about my bad hair days.

“I wasn’t this bad,” he said, “when Jessica was alive.”

“Jessica?”

“My wife.” He looked down at the gold wedding band he still wore on his finger. “She passed away ten years ago.”

I only hoped she didn’t die waiting for him to finish one of his stories.

“So tell me,” he said, “what’s a lovely young woman doing having dinner with an old coot like me?”

“Actually,” I said, “I wanted to ask you some questions. You see, the police think Kandi may have been responsible for Quinn’s death—”

“Preposterous!” Wells said, indignant.

“Anyhow, I’m doing a little investigating, to try and figure out who the real killer is.”

“Investigating?” His bushy white eyebrows rose in disbelief. “Like a private eye?”

“Sort of. Last year, I helped the police solve a murder in Westwood.”

“Did you really? Why, that reminds me of the time I played the inspector in J.B. Priestley’s
An Inspector Calls
. Marvelous play. We ran Standing Room Only for eighteen months. Oh, dear,” he said, catching himself, “I’m doing it again, aren’t I? One of these days, I’m going to have to have my jaws wired shut. So, tell me, what can I do to help?”

“I was hoping you might have seen something the night of the murder. Something suspicious, or out of the ordinary.”

“No, not really,” he said. “Most of the time, I’m afraid, I was chewing poor Zach’s ear off, just as I’ve done with you tonight. I’m sure he was relieved when I left him to do my soliloquy.”

“Do you know where Zach went when you left him?”

“No. He said something about trying to find an aspirin.”

Mmm. I couldn’t help wondering if he went looking for it in the prop room.

“Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to kill Quinn?”

“Not really. Quinn had his share of detractors, but I don’t think anyone disliked him enough to kill him.”

“Oh,” I said, not bothering to hide my disappointment.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “I’ve got an idea. Perhaps his wife did it.”

“His wife?”

“The spouse is the first person the police suspect in homicides. I learned that when I guest-starred on
Columbo
. It was the episode where the wealthy psychiatrist murders his blackmailing lover. Maybe you’ve seen it? The
Los Angeles Times
said my performance as the psychiatrist was ‘devilishly effective.’”

Whatever made me think this guy was going to be any help? I’d have been better off questioning Prozac.

“Actually,” I said, steamrolling past
Columbo
, “Quinn’s wife was in New York the night of the murder.”

“Pity,” Wells sighed, disappointed.

“Aside from Quinn’s wife,” I said, “can you think of anyone else who might have wanted to kill him?”

“No,” he said, “I really can’t. Murder’s such a drastic act. It’s one thing to do it on stage, another thing entirely to do it in real life.”

On that philosophical note, our chocolate mousses arrived. I ate every last speck of mine, and most of his, while Wells told me about the time he went skinny-dipping with Dame May Whitty.

At last the check came. Wells insisted on treating me. I let him. I thought of it as combat pay.

He walked me out to my Corolla and waited until I was safely strapped inside.

“Ah,” he sighed, “if I were only twenty years younger….”

Was he kidding? He’d still be old enough to be my really old father.

I smiled weakly and thanked him for a lovely evening. Then I drove off into the night, wondering how many calories there were in two chocolate mousses.

YOU’VE GOT MAIL!

TO: Jausten

FROM: Daddyo

SUBJECT: They can’t fool me!

Your mom has hidden the love oil. I went out to her car yesterday to look for it, but it was gone. She’s probably got it stashed away at that sleazeball Koskovalis’s condo. Your mother and John “Kinky” Koskovalis think they can fool me, but they can’t. I’m on to them both. Although I must say it’s him I blame. After all, your mother is a very impressionable woman. He’s obviously taking advantage of her. Every time I think of your mother in his greasy arms, I feel like beating the guy to a pulp.

PS. This morning I caught your mother trying to slip St. John’s Wort into my Wheatena!

TO: Jausten

FROM: Shoptillyoudrop

SUBJECT: Worried about you

Good heavens! I just heard about the murder on your show! It’s all over the news. Jaine, dear, please be careful. I don’t like the idea of your working where a murder has taken place. And poor Anthony Quinn! Imagine, him being poisoned like that. I just adored him in Zorba the Greek.

TO: Shoptillyoudrop

FROM: Jausten

Don’t worry, Mom. I’ll be fine.

And PS. The actor who died was Quinn Kirkland, not Anthony Quinn.

TO: Jausten

FROM: Shoptillyoudrop

Oh, dear. I’m having so much trouble with names lately. I’d be worried about it, if I weren’t already so worried about your father. Yesterday, he bought a punching bag, and he’s been out in the garage all morning “training.” Heaven knows for what!

TO: Jausten

FROM: Daddyo

SUBJECT: Advice for my Lamb Chop

Jaine, lamb chop. Listen to your daddy, and quit your job immediately! I don’t trust any of these show business people. And now that there’s been a murder in your studio, I don’t think it’s a safe place to be. Well, gotta go. I’ve got something very important I’ve got to take care of.

TO: Jausten

FROM: Shoptillyoudrop

Your father’s just slammed out of the house to, as he put it, “avenge his honor.” Oh, dear. What on earth does that mean?

Chapter Fifteen

O
n Tuesday, we auditioned frogs.

I’m not kidding. Audrey wanted to make sure the frog we used in “Muffy’s Revenge” could ribbit on cue. So we spent an entire morning in the conference room as a parade of animal trainers brought in their little green friends.

Do you know how much money Stan and Audrey were getting paid to do this? Seven figures, not including residuals. And inner-city teachers are making zilch. Go write your congressman.

At one point Audrey lost her cool when one of the frogs jumped up on her lap.

“Don’t do that again,” she said, narrowing her eyes at the wayward amphibian.

And he didn’t. Audrey’s that intimidating.

After several hours rating amphibians, we finally selected the lead frog and five stand-ins. And then we broke for lunch.

“Guess what,” Kandi said, when we got back to our office. “My new agent called me this morning.”