Set Sail for Murder
Read Set Sail for Murder Online
Authors: R. T. Jordan
REMAINS TO BE SCENE
FINAL CURTAIN
A TALENT FOR MURDER
SET SAIL FOR MURDER
Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation
FOR MURDER
R. T. JORDAN
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2010 by R. T. Jordan
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Library of Congress Card Catalogue Number: 2010921530
eISBN-13: 978-0-7582-6733-7
eISBN-10: 0-7582-6733-9
First Hardcover Printing: June 2010
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
For Kevin Howell
(From the beginning …)
Persons of Interest
First and foremost I must thank my fab family at Kensington, specifically the most delightful editor on the planet, Editor in Chief John Scognamiglio. Also, the incredibly gifted illustration and design artists Mary Ann Lasher and Louis Malcangi. (I have loved and marveled at the work you’ve done on every one of my book covers!) Gratitude, of course, to my talented agent, Joëlle Delbourgo. I’ll forever be happily thanking my amazing publicist and dear friend, Robin Blakely.
Countless others contribute directly and indirectly to the writing of my books. Most notably they are (in alphabetical order):
Michael Archer, Billy Barnes, Andrew W. M. Beierle, Bruce Chapnick, Alan Guño, Karlyn Hale, Kevin Howell, Richard S. Klein, Bob and Jakki Jordan, Jim and Sharon Jordan, Patricia E. Jordan, Pat Kavanagh, Al Kramer, Marcela Landres, Laura Levine and Mark Lachter, Chris O’Brien, Julia Oliver, Emmanuel Parossien, Brian Perry, Liz Ploger, Mike Roberto, David Rothley, Jane A. Shearing, David Sinkler, Steven Smith, Rosemary Sparrow, J. Randy Taraborrelli, Cathy and Randy Wharton, and Gayle Will-man. Oh, and David Hyde Pierce, too!
Eternally, in light and serenity: Dame Muriel Pollia, Ph.D.
“Working in Hollywood does give one a certain expertise in the field of prostitution.”
—Jane Fonda
“Hollywood is where they shoot too many pictures, and not enough actors.”
—Walter Winchell
HAPTER
1
“I
f I see one more
ESTATE FOR SALE
sign planted on our street, I swear I’ll develop hysterical blindness!” Polly Pepper complained from the back seat of her Rolls-Royce.
As her son, Tim, maneuvered the family car up serpentine Stone Canyon Road to Pepper Plantation, their fabled home in the ritzy hills of Bel Air, California, Polly continued her rant. “You know who’s swooping in like carpetbaggers and buying up these foreclosures, don’t you? That’s right. Bling-laden rap music producers driving humongous bulletproof, carbon-emissions-choking Hummers with smoked-black windows. I saw ‘em on
The Real Housewives of Orange County.
They pick up pricey suburban palaces like ours and treat a star’s mansion as if it were little more than Barbie’s Hampton’s Holiday Playhouse. Music people are the only ones left in Hollywood who can afford the bazilliondollar-sticker shocker prices that Realtors are pasting on everything from Nimoy’s cruddy tear-down to that cardboard box over on Mulholland that the widow McMahon has been trying to unload since her meal ticket expired.”
Tim ignored his mother as he pumped the brake to second-guess
an indecisive squirrel that was playing Russian roulette with the traffic.
Seated beside Polly was her maid and best friend, Placenta, who rolled her eyes and made a low growling noise as she tried to ignore her boss’s tirade. Looking out the window at the mansions they passed, she agreed, “Agents from Vultures21 have been circling our place for months. And I’ve never seen your business manager cry as hard as he did this afternoon.”
“Never mind Eeyore,” Polly said, waving away Placenta’s recall of the solemn financial meeting from which they’d just come. “Doom and gloom. The sky is falling. It’s the End Times. Whine, whine, whine. Honestly, the way he carried on, you’d think this was World War III, Armageddon, and the final episode of
Two and a Half Men
all rolled into one big black plague. I promise we’ll survive, kids! I’m a star, for heaven’s sake. An icon. A great job with tons o’ mullah will come along soon. Just like Carol Burnett, I always land in clover.”
For the first time since emerging as an international entertainment celebrity forty years ago, Polly Pepper was personally feeling the heat from the global financial meltdown. The value of her investments had dramatically plunged. Her 401(k) was more like a 01(k). Most of her Hollywood chums were downsizing and laying off their personal fitness trainers, ditching their doggie hypnotherapists, and negotiating lower compensation for their pricey mistresses and/or boy toys. Rodeo Drive was as deserted as a Helen Reddy comeback concert tour.
As the tall black wrought-iron PP monogrammed gates to Pepper Plantation came into view, Polly momentarily felt a sense of dread about her beloved home. Featured a dozen times in
Architectural Digest,
the house was almost as famous as Neverland Ranch and Graceland—but without the dead masters of the manse. Polly could never imagine leaving the estate, any more than the Hunchback could
leave Notre Dame Cathedral. She’d sooner be hit by one of the ubiquitous tourist buses that hogged the narrow streets in the hills, than hand over the keys to the bank in a foreclosure and have to live in a common condo in Riverside.
She straightened. “I still have my champagne wishes and caviar dreams! They brought me to where I am today.”
“Nearly out of bottles in the wine cellar,” Placenta reminded Polly.
“My account at the Liquor Locker is still active.”
As the gates to the estate parted, Tim guided the car along the cobblestone-paved driveway and stopped beside the granite front steps of the Norman-style mansion. Built during the silent screen era for long-dead and longer-forgotten star Carmel Myers, it was the house Polly had dreamed of owning ever since she was a little girl, selling maps to the movie stars’ homes. Back then, while waving down cars with out-of-state license plates, and wearing the skimpiest halter top her mother would allow, she had promised herself that the home would one day be hers. And in the 1970s, for what was then a staggering fortune of two hundred thousand dollars, she made her dream come true. All these decades later, she was still proud of her twenty-seven-room mansion, its manicured gardens, and Olympic-size swimming pool.
Polly stepped out of the car, but instead of following Tim and Placenta directly into the house, she walked to the three-tiered water fountain gurgling in the center of the car park. She admired the large, ornate, carved stone bowls resting beneath a topper finial of a stone cherub—fat, naked, un-circumcised, and grinning mischievously as it urinated into the shallow water, which overflowed from the uppermost basin down to the lowest pool. She peered into the water and reached in to retrieve a penny. “My lucky day!”
Polly turned around and took in the full view of her magnificent home. Bombarded with memories of her nearly four decades living on this property, Polly could feel tears well in her eyes. She recalled the glamorous star-studded
parties, many of which her son, Tim, had personally conceived and designed. She thought of the years of Tim’s growing up: his pony, which roamed the estate and ate her roses, the relief she felt when he fell in love for the first time. “A mother’s proudest moment,” she said to herself, holding her hand to her heart. “Thank God he didn’t turn out straight! Bo-ring!”
Polly caught Tim and Placenta watching her from the steps and decided there were too many happy memories to risk losing the house. It was time to do something about her potentially dire financial situation.
“Coming,” she called out, and danced toward the front doors.
When Polly entered the house, she set her clutch purse on the Lalique foyer table, exhaled loudly, and said, “Listen up, it’s powwow time. Meet me in Paradise”—the name she’d bestowed upon her bathroom/spa—“in fifteen minutes. Wear your Mr. Wizard caps, ‘cause we’re about to become captains of our own futures. We need to reinvent ourselves. To make Kool-Aid!”
“I hope you mean lemonade.” Tim gulped. “If you’re planning a Jim Jones suicide pact, I’m joining AA.”
“I’m a survivor,” Polly called back as she ascended the Scarlett O’Hara Memorial Staircase toward the second story of her famous home.
As her hand caressed the carved mahogany banister, Polly was conscious of the simple parts of the house that made up the sum total of her mansion. The plush carpet on the steps felt softer. The crystal chandelier, which hung from the two-story ceiling in the stairwell, seemed more elegant. When she arrived on the second-floor landing, her attention was drawn to the showbiz memorabilia that adorned the walls and illustrated her long and illustrious career. “It’s been a great ride,” she proclaimed as she passed framed photographs of herself with other legends, including Sammy Davis, Jr., Julie Andrews, Edie Adams, Eva
Marie Saint, Fred Astaire, and even Princess Diana rolling her eyes at the queen of England. “Something will save us from Debtor’s Prison,” she whispered, and headed for her bedroom suite and the anticipated luxury of taking a bubble bath in her mammoth sunken Jacuzzi.
In her bedroom, Polly stepped out of her heels and kicked her shoes across the carpet toward the French doors of her walk-in closet. Polly entered her ginormous bathroom—complete with every modern and futuristic plumbing amenity and skin care product a cover girl could wish for. From the plush monogrammed bath towels, to the wine cooler stocked with champagne and chilled flutes, to the rain shower, bidet, steam room, and spray-on-tan chamber, this was the one place on Earth where she truly felt that spending eternity in heaven would be a comedown by comparison.