Lucky Stars (26 page)

t
hirty-two

“
T
ell us exactly what happened the night you and Victor were drinking and arguing and you got him to admit he’d murdered Mary Elizabeth,” said Jack. We were still seated in Karen’s living room, but now we were taking notes. Jack was writing down the specifics of the scenario during which Victor had been sufficiently provoked to confess his crime. I was writing down the specifics of Karen’s appearance, her mannerisms, her gestures, and, most important, her speech patterns. Our plan was for me to show up in Montecito and play the part of Karen Sweetzer Chellus, and for Jack to create the script I would deliver in order to force Victor into revealing his true colors in front of my mother.

“I was standing in the middle of the room,” said Karen, “a glass of scotch in my hand—”

“Which hand?” I interrupted.

“My right hand,” she said.

“What were you wearing?” I asked.

“Oh, let’s see. Probably something like the outfit I’ve got on. Anyway, I was standing there with a glass of scotch in my right hand and a cigarette—a Marlboro Light—in my left, and I said something like, ‘Go on, you bastard. Be honest for a change. You married me for my money. Didn’t you? Didn’t you?’ I was taunting him, goading him, trying to get him to admit what I kn
e
w deep down. Obviously, this was not a relationship based on trust.”

“Obviously,” said Jack. “But I assume Victor denied your accusation at first.”

“Over and over. I didn’t get a straight answer out of him until I managed to push the right button.”

“Which was?” said Jack.

“Which was to say, ‘You’ve lost money on business venture after business venture, Victor, and now you don’t have anything close to resembling a j-o-b. Basically, you’re a bum, a deadbeat, a nobody, and yet you live like a king who is somehow able to keep up with your ritzy friends in Beverly Hills. How is that possible? I’ll tell you how. You conned me into marrying you and paying the bills for everything, including that over-the-top wardrobe of yours.’ ”

“Did you really pay all the bills?” asked Jack.

“No, but like I said before, this was partly the booze talking. I’m one of those people who shouldn’t go near the stuff.”

“How did he respond to being called a deadbeat?” I asked.

“He got all red in the face and started shouting at me. He’s a man, and men don’t appreciate it when you challenge their ability to earn a living. Macho asshole. He said, ‘I’m an entrepreneur! I take risks in business! I win some, I lose some.’ Then I said, ‘You’re a deadbeat, plain and simple. You found yourself in a financial hole and you married me. Admit it, Victor. Admit it!’ He still wouldn’t bite, so I pushed his other button.”

“How many buttons does he have?” I said.

“Plenty, but it’s the mother button that’s really worth pushing.”

“Are you saying he didn’t get along with his mother?” I asked, being an authority on the subject.

“He was crazy about her, just crushed when she passed away. If you want to make him mad, all you have to do is say something mean about his mommy.”

“That’s what you did?” I said.

“You bet. I said, ‘Maybe it was your sainted mother who gave you the idea that it’s okay to marry women for their money. She probably taught you that if you can’t hack it in business, find a woman to bail you out.’ He shook his fist at me and said, ‘You want the truth? Here it is and it has nothing to do with my mother, so leave her out of it. It has to do with you. Why would anyone in his right mind marry a lush like you if not for that money your family never spends? Cheap. You’re all cheap!’ So now he was criticizing me and my family, and I wasn’t amused. I waltzed over to him and threw my drink in his face.”

She threw her drink in his face? Well, I tried not to look at Jack,
naturally. I was ashamed that I
had behaved toward him the way Karen had toward Victor. On the other hand, playing this scene would be a snap for me, given the practice.

“What did he do after you threw the drink at him?” Jack asked Karen.

“He grabbed me by my hair and said, ‘You’d better watch yourself, Mrs. Chellus. I was a widower when I met you, remember? You might want to think about how I got that way.’ ”

“He was referring to Mary Elizabeth then,” said Jack.

“Right. I said, ‘Oh, so you needed her money, too, is that it? How’d you get rid of her, Victor? Did you have one of your cracke
r
jack household staff throw her overboard on your sailboat—or, should I say
her
sailboat?’ He scowled, as if I had insulted his manhood again. And then he filled me in about Mary Elizabeth and her food allergies, and how Rosa doctored their lunch cooler that day. You know, at first I thought he was kidding or bragging or just trying to pay me back for saying something bad about his precious mother. But then I realized he was telling the truth. I sobered up very quickly and decided to make nice to him. I sat in his lap and said I was sorry for drinking too much and that we should just forget everything and be friends. He said that was fine with him, but I knew I was toast. Two days after our fight, I had my ‘accident’ in the car, just like Mary Elizabeth had her ‘accident’ in the boat. A pretty story, huh?”

“Not pretty at all,” I said. “To think that my mother’s with that lunatic right this minute.”

“Then go to her,” urged Karen. “You two have a great plan. Just remember to push Victor’s button—say something nasty about his mother in your script—and you’ll have him right where you want him.”

Jack and I thanked her, peeled ourselves off the plastic, and hurried out of there before Luther could lick us good-bye.

I
phoned Maura from the Milwaukee airport and told her
everything.

“I love this!” she said whe
n I outlined what I
would need her to do. “I absolutely love this. And of course I’ll help.
I’ve got some sick days coming t
o me, so I’ll take them starting tomorrow and concentrate on you, on your one-woman show!”

“It
will
be the acting job of a lifetime,” I said. “I’ve never been able to fool my mother about anything, so convincing her I’m Victor’s ex-wife should be quite a trick. Mostly, I just want to watch him squirm.”

“And you will. Your idea is brilliant. It’s not on
ly
going to save your mother’s life, it’s going to allow her to walk away from this nightmare feeling lucky to be free of Victor forever.”

“That’s the plan.”

We did get started the very next morning. Maura and I made a shopping list of the supplies we’d need in order to physically transform me into Karen. And then off we went to Burbank, to an L.A. retailing institution called Cinema Secrets, which sells makeup and beauty and hair products, along with specialty items. Maura has a spare bedroom full of such products, but for the big jobs— like the one I was plotting—she relies on Cinema Secrets, where she’s a regular client, as are many professional makeup artists.

“Let’s start with Karen’s hair,” she said, guiding me through the aisles and stopping in the wigs department. “You told me she has teased-up platinum hair, right?”

“Right. Think Phyllis Diller on a good day.”

Maura scanned the shelves and found a wig she thought would fit the bill—literally. “Since we’re on a budget, I’m going with nylon,” she said, “unless you want to pay five hundred bucks for the real hair kind.”

“As you pointed out, we’re on a budget,” I said. “The nylon will be perfect.”

“Okay, now let’s deal with Karen’s skin. You said she’s in her fifties, which means we’ve got to age you.” We wandered into another area of the store. “Here it is,” she said after searching through the rows and rows of bottles and jars. “Balloon latex. It’s a thin rubbery liquid that’ll give us the fines we’ll need. It takes a few applications, but once it’s on, you’ll look years older.”

“Most actresses are having surgery to look younger. I’m having balloon latex to look older. I hope my mother appreciates this.”

“How can she not?”

“Right. How long does this stuff stay on once you apply it to my skin?”

“Several hours, unless you start sweating profusely. Then it could flake at the edges and peel off.”

“So I either have to remain calm or remember to stand near an air-conditioning vent.”

“Don’t worry. It’ll be fine,” said Maura, who moved to a shelf full of tape.

“Now what?” I asked as she sorted through boxes.

“You said Karen is bosomy. We’ve got to give you cleavage.”

“Mickey’s been telling me that for years.”

“Well, thanks to Karen, you’ll have those knockers he always wanted you to have—temporarily.” She plucked two kinds of tape off the shelf: surgical and the much heavier electrical. “We’re going to pull you and tape you and lift you until you’re spilling out of your blouse.”

“Excellent.”

She headed for another section and took down a tin of wax from the shelf. “What’s that for?” I said.

“It’s mortician’s wax. They use it at funeral homes to fill in parts of the body that have been injured or broken
off or whatever. We use it for theatrical makeup if we don’t have time to create an actual prosthetic. You said Karen has a long nose. After a little of this wax, you’ll have one, too. Now we need to buy
stuff that will plump up your li
ps. You did say Karen has had her share of collagen injections, right?”

I nodded. “I don’t know how she eats with those things. They’re like inflatable rafts.”

“I have the answer right here.” She held up a lipstick called P
lump & Polish. “It swells your li
ps within a minute after you apply it and lasts for hours.”

“What’s in it? Shell
fish? My
li
ps swell up if I take even a bite of shrimp.”

“I don’t know what’s in it. I only know it works.” We concluded our shopping spree at Cinema Secrets, then moved on to a store called Western Costume, where we rented foam pads to simulate Karen’s wide hips and generous butt.

“Pretty soon it’ll be showtime,” said Maura as I started to feel jittery, th
e way I always did before a per
formance.

t
hirty-three

T
he San Ysidro ranch is one of those resorts that’s as luxurious as it is legendary. Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh were married there. John and Jackie Kennedy spent their honeymoon there. And now Victor Chellus and Helen Reiser were under the delusion that they were about to do both there.

Set on five hundred acres overlooking the Pacific Ocean and the Santa Ynez mountains, the ranch is definitely the spot for romance, with its cozy cottages and gourmet restaurants and numerous
amenities
. (Along with the usual stuff like facials, they also offer massages—for your pet. Yes, should you bring Fido along, they not only provide “doggie turndown service” but have
a Reiki master on hand to align Fido’s energies and target his or her twelve body points. In other words,
Luther would have enjoyed himself immensely.)

The three of us—Jack, Maura, and I—drove the ninety miles from L.A. to Montecito in Jack’s car, armed with our props, our products
,
and our sense of purpose. Jack had totally dedicated himself to Th
e Plan, not only extending his “
family emergency” in order to put himself at my disposal for the few days I needed him, but insisting on paying for our accommodations. And not just any accommodations. He splurged on a two-bedroom suite at a whopping $1,350 per night. As extravagant and generous as it was, it was also the perfect set-up—Jack and I would stay in one bedroom, Maura in the other, with a large living room in which I could quickly do my makeup, wig, and wardrobe changes.

We checked in at the hotel under a fake name and, within minutes after settling into our suite, Maura sat me down and got to work. She was going to transform me into Karen, and there was no time to waste.

On went the padding around my hips and buttocks. On went the tape pulling my breasts inward and upward. And on went the balloon latex.

“We’ll start the aging process by giving you some nice crow’s feet,” said Maura.

“Nice crow’s feet,” I said. “That’s go
t to be an oxymoron.”

“Sit still,” she shushed me, and began to stretch the skin around my eyes with her fingers, tugging it gently toward my ears, and applying a thin layer of the liquid latex onto it with a cosmetic sponge, a process known in the trade as stretch and stipple. While she was still stretching my skin, she dried the latex with a blow-dryer, powdered it, and repeated the application two more times. Before I knew it, I had genuine crow’s feet.

“Why would anyone get a face-lift?” I said, admiring
Maura’s handiwork in the mirror. “These lines
give me
character.”

Jack laughed. “Let’s see how you feel about the
lines
when they’re real.”

Maura stretched and stippled the skin on my forehead, on both sides of my mouth, along the center of my neck, even on the backs of my hands.

“Now what are you doing?” I said when she squirted a different kind of liquid on the end of my nose.

“It’s glue,” she said. “I’m attaching the mortician’s wax to it to give you a longer shnozzola.”

On came the wax, which she sculpted and smoothed until it no longer looked like a tumor. Then she coated it all with a clear sealer, followed by foundation and powder.

“Voil
a
,” she said. “Karen’s nose.”

“Amazing,” I said, marveling at the new me.

“Now pucker up,” she said, pulling out the Plush & Plump lipstick, and painting my lips with it, after which she painted on the rest of my makeup, including the heavy black mascara Karen wore. As for my hair, she pinned it back and covered it in the platinum wig we’d bought. Then she dressed me in clingy black pants and a low-cut white shirt and flip-floppy mules, making sure my hip and butt pads were securely tied beneath the clothes.

“And here are your stage props,” she said, sticking a glass of scotch in my right hand and a Marlboro Light between the fingers of my left. When I gazed at mys
elf in the mirror and took in th
e whole picture, I could only shake my temporarily blond head. “I look more like Karen than Karen does,” I marveled.

“Not unless you do her voice,” Jade reminded me.

“Right,” I said, lowering my register a couple of octaves. Karen had that deep, husky, smoker’s rasp. I had practiced it and I had it down pretty well. As a matter of fact, I had Karen down pretty well—the sexpot walk, the hurried gesturing with her hands, the b
oozy, tough-
broad attitude. I was more than ready for the curtain to rise.

“Do you want to go over the script one more time?” Jack asked, giving my arm an affectionate squeeze.

“No,” I said. “I think we rehearsed it enough in the car. But I do want to go over what happens after I do my scene.”

“Well, what we hope will happen is that you’ll trap Victor into admitting things he would never have admitted otherwise, and that your mother will be so horrified that she’ll throw him out. As soon as he leaves, you’ll run back to our cottage, where Maura and I will be waiting, and you’ll change into your own identity. Then, after a reasonable amount of time, you’ll call your mother in her cottage, pretending you’re in L.A., and she’ll tell you how terrible Victor turned out to be, how right about him you turned out to be, and how she wishes she’d listened to you in the first place. Then you’ll tell her you’re so glad she’s seen the light, even though you’re sorry she’s hurt, and you’ll offer to drive up and bring her home. She’ll be thrilled you’re coming to get her—all three of us will be coming to get her, obviously—and that will be that. Once we have her back safe and sound, we’ll talk to her about getting in touch with the police.”

I took a deep breath. “What if I screw up?”

“You’re not going to screw up,” he said. “You’re a professional actress, Stacey. But if something does go wrong and you’re not back at the cottage within, say, a half hour, Maura and I will come and get you.”

“What do you think could go wrong?” I said.

“Victor,” he said. “He might not appreciate being given the boot by your mother. But the good news is that he’s not violent; he hires people to do his dirty work. So I’m sure you and Helen will be fine.”

“Famous last words,” I said. “The truth is, we won’t know what he’s going to do unless I get over there and start the show.”

I picked up the phone and asked to be connected to Victor’s cottage. I needed to find out which building he and my mother were in—and to make sure they were there, right that moment, as opposed to sight-seeing or, God forbid, exchanging wedding vows. Disguising my voice, I pretended to be the hostess in the dining room. I felt my heart clutch when it was my mother’s adenoidal honk I heard through the earpiece in the phone. “Hello?” she said.

“Good evening, Ms. Reiser. This is Rhonda in the Stonehouse restaurant. I’m calling to let you know that the chef has some lovely offerings this evening, and I’m wondering if you and Mr. Chellus will be dining with us. I don’t see your reservation here.”

“It most certainly should be there,” my mother said, sounding huffy, the way she always did when the service she was getting was questionable. “I made the reservation myself. Don’t you se
e it? Chellus for two at seven-
thirty? We’re in the Willow Tree Suite, aren’t we, Victor?” Good. So he was there, too.

“Ah, yes. There you are,” I said, pleased that I had gotten the information I needed. “I don’t know how I missed it. So sorry for bothering you and Mr. Chellus, and I look forward to seeing you both at seven-thirty.” I was about to hang up when my mother said, “Now just you wait a minute.”

I froze, wondering if she had recognized my voice. “Yes?”

“You said the chef had some lovely offerings. Like what?”

“Oh.” A reprieve. “For entrees, he’s preparing a coriander-crusted Mus
covy duck breast tonight,” I im
provised. “It’s served with an apple-potato pancake, fennel ragout, and calvados
jus.”

‘Too fatty,” said the same woman who’d fed me creamed everything as a child. “What else?”

“Well, if you prefer fish, we’re serving sea bass tonight. It comes with roas
ted shallots, Swiss chard, fin
gerling potatoes, and apple smoked bacon.” I was making myself hungry. All I had in the way of sustenance at that moment was the glass of scotch in my right hand. It was supposed to be a prop, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to take a sip, so I did.

“I’m in the mood for pasta,” she said, prolonging my agony. “What can you do for me?”

“We have something very special for you, Ms. Reiser,” I said. “The chef is preparing truffled potato ravioli with marscapone cheese. It comes with wild mushroom ragout and chervil butter emulsion.” Not bad from someone who never cooked, right? Rosa would have been impressed.

“Perfect. I’ll have that.”

“A beautiful choice,” I said. “I’ll tell the kitchen to save a serving for you. See you later, Ms. Reiser.”

I hung up before she could ask about dessert.

“Okay, you guys,” I said to Jack and Maura. “They’re in something called the Willow Tree Suite. All I’ve got to do is find it, and we’re off and running.”

“Good luck, Stacey,” said Jack.

“Yeah, break a leg,” said Maura.

Armed with my scotch and my cigarette, I made my way to the Willow Tree Suite. I lit the cigarette, took another swig of scotch, and knocked on the door.

“Who is it?” Victor boomed.

“An old friend,” I said in Karen’s rasp.

“Who?”

“Open the door and find out.”

He swung open the door. I was tempted to shout
“
Trick or treat! Happy Halloween!” but restrained myself. Instead, I took a drag on the Marlboro and said, “Long time no see, honey,” then sashayed into the room before he could get an up-close-and-personal look at me.

“What the hell?” he said, staggering a little but remaining by the still-open door, as if he hoped I might use it to leave as suddenly as I’d arrived.

“This is an improm
ptu visit from your devoted ex-
wife,” I said. “I happened to be staying at the hotel and heard you were here, too. Some coincidence, huh?”

He was too dumbstruck to respond.

“The guy at the front desk told me you were here with your lady friend, Victor. Where is she?” I asked this because my mother was supposed to be there but was nowhere in sight.

“Karen?” he said, his c
heeks flushing slightly. “Is…
is it really you?”

“Yes, honey. We’ve established that it’s me, so let’s move on, okay?” I took another drag on the cigarette and
inadvertently
blew the smoke up my own nose. The coughing only lasted a second or two, thank God. “You didn’t answer me. Where’s the woman who’s crazy enough to hook up with you, Victor?”

“She’s
…
she’s
not
…
she went t
o
browse in the gift shop,” he stammered, clearly thrown by my cameo appearance. “But she’ll be back pretty soon, and I’d rather not—”

“Rather not introduce us?” I taunted him, faking a bravado I certainly didn’t feel. Why did my mother have to slip out for a quickie shopping spree when I needed her to be right there in the damn cottage? I had planned to perform my act with
both
of them in the audience. That was the whole point. What’s more, I wasn’t thrilled about being alone with a homicidal maniac. What if my showing up made him snap and kill me? There would be no witnesses, no one to stop him, no one to save me. Maybe this idea wasn’t so hot after all.

“I’m not introducing you to anyone,” said Victor, recovering, his upper lip in a curl.

“Oh, my. Don’t tell me she doesn’t know about me? That’s it, isn’t it? She doesn’t have a clue that you and I were married once upon a time. Not that we were the love match of the century.”

He ran his eyes over me as I strutted around the room. I was petrified he would recognize me underneath all the makeup and camouflage but he didn’t, probably because he maintained his position near the door, far enough away not to see that my nose was the consistency of a candle.

“What do you want, Karen?” he said. “Talk fast and then get out. Is it money?”

I laughed. “Why would I come to you for money? It was the other way around with us, remember?” I realized then that it was incredibly hot in there, not a breath of fresh air in the place. I assumed this was my mother’s doing, as she was always “chilly” and, therefore, liked the windows closed and the air conditioner off.

“Then what is it? You prance in here after all these years with your booze and your attitude, and I demand
to know why. Are you trying to make trouble for me just for sport? If you are, you’ll be sorry.”

“Aw, is that any way to talk to me, honey?” I was stalling for time, hoping my mother would come back so I could deliver my lines and be done with it. How long could it take to pick out a couple of souvenirs? I was on her shit list, so she wasn’t buying me any San Ysidro Ranch T-shirts. Where was she, for God’s sake?

“I’ll talk to you any way I feel like it,” he said, sounding tougher now.