The Bad Always Die Twice Page 2

  Chapter 2

  “Staying in tonight or going out?” Victoria asked, gazing into the mirror. Dressed in a white silk robe, she sat at her rosewood vanity and carefully removed her eye makeup. She’d hosted a charity luncheon that afternoon and had been in full goddess mode, something she no longer did every day.

  Nikki, who sat cross-legged on the floor flipping through an old photo album, glanced up at her mother. Even seen this way, as a reflection in the old mirror, her hair in a turban, her face wiped clean of makeup, she was a woman of extraordinary beauty, a truly golden Venus. Nikki may not have been exactly jealous of her mother’s beauty, but she was certainly envious of it. “Staying in.”

  “You and Jeremy should go out more.”

  It was a familiar topic of conversation, one Nikki didn’t care to delve into this evening. After a long day at work, she just wanted to relax with her dogs and not think, and certainly not argue with her mother. Her relationship with her childhood-friend-turned-lover was complicated, but weren’t all relationships?

  Both of Nikki’s Cavalier King Charles Spaniels lounged with her on the floor among throw pillows, and she scratched one of the pups behind the ear. Victoria didn’t allow dogs on the furniture, so Nikki sat on the floor with them. At the end of the day, the dogs craved her attention and she, on some level, craved theirs. It was such simple, uncomplicated love between her and Stanley and Oliver. The only effortless relationship she had.

  “What do you think, Stanley?” The dog’s ears perked up at the sound of Nikki’s voice. “Should Jeremy and I go out or should he go to his daughter’s dance recital? Or maybe Grandma should just mind her own beeswax, hmmm?” She scratched under the dog’s chin and he sighed with obvious pleasure.

  “I am not a grandmother to those canines.” Victoria returned her attention to the mirror. “Stop trying to bait me. I worry about you. You say you and Jeremy are in love, but you rarely see each other more than once a week.”

  “His wife died, Mother. An ugly, hair-falling-out, shriveling-to-nothing cancer death. His children need him and I’m not going to foist myself upon them.”

  Jealous of the attention Stanley was getting, Oliver inched forward until he rested his muzzle on Nikki’s leg. She stroked his soft, spotted red and white coat. Oliver was a Blenheim. Stanley, a cousin twice removed to Oliver and two years older, was a black, white and tan Tri.

  “I understand that perfectly.” Victoria lifted both hands in a conceding pose; for her, every movement was about perfect lighting, angle and balance, even when she wasn’t in front of the camera. Victoria never, ever got caught by the paparazzi picking spinach from between her teeth or dragging toilet paper beneath the heel of her alligator-skin pump. Nikki had had the bad fortune of both. “I understand perfectly that children are needy. I raised seven children of my own.”

  “You and a revolving door of nannies,” Nikki muttered. She regretted the words the moment they came out of her mouth.

  Victoria elegantly turned on the padded bench and looked Nikki directly in the eye. “Did you come here to pick a fight?”

  Nikki sighed and stroked Stanley’s head. “No.”

  “Good. So spare me the Joan Crawford guilt trip and tell me about your day.”

  Nikki smiled. This was one of the reasons she loved her mother so dearly. If there was one person Victoria Bordeaux knew, it was herself. The good and the bad, and she made no excuses for either. “I think I may have sold that place in Brentwood we listed last month.”

  The fact that Nikki sold real estate for a living was still a prickly subject, even after ten years, but Victoria’s smile was genuine. “The one down the street from that football player who killed his wife and got off scot-free?”

  O.J. Simpson had just been put in his place by Victoria Bordeaux and he didn’t even know it. “O.J. Simpson. And the jury found him innocent. 7.7 million.”

  “I suppose you have to split the commission with Jessica.”

  “She is my partner. And the listing agent gets a cut, but I may have to buy myself that antique Victorian ring I was telling you about, the snake one with the emerald eyes.”

  “You must have gotten your taste from your father.” Victoria slipped a cigarette from a pack on her vanity. It didn’t matter who told her the dangers of smoking, or how often, it was a habit she said she’d indulged in for the last fifty-odd years and at her age she didn’t intend to give it up. “Because it certainly wasn’t from me.” She struck a flame from the antique lighter that had not been an antique when it had been given to her by Howard Hughes. White smoke curled around her turbaned head.

  Oliver wrinkled his nose and sneezed in protest of the acrid smoke. Nikki stifled a chuckle.

  “Please.” Victoria gazed down at the dog. “There are no Oscars for canines. Not even an Emmy,” she sniffed.

  Nikki absently studied a photo of herself taken on her fifth birthday. Her mother had somehow wrangled a photo-op with Nikki’s favorite TV personality and thrown her a space-themed party on one of the studio lots. Somewhere, there was a picture of her and Jeremy that day, too. She flipped the page. “Speaking of Oscars, what are we watching this week?”

  “The Little Foxes or maybe Johnny Belinda. I haven’t decided.”

  Nikki set the photo album aside and gathered both dogs onto her lap to cuddle them. “Johnny Belinda starred Jane Wyman,” she recalled. “You were friends at Paramount, right?”

  “She was a little before my time, but I knew her.” Victoria exhaled blue-gray smoke. “A nice enough girl.”

  “I can’t believe you knew Ronald Reagan.” Nikki’s phone vibrated next to her in her bag. “He was such a hottie back then. Who could have imagined he would be president one day?”

  “I said that the day he was elected.”

  Nikki grinned as she fumbled for her BlackBerry. “Let’s have a little respect for the dead, if not for two-term presidents, shall we?” Locating her phone in her Prada shoulder bag, she looked at the screen. Jessica. “Hey,” she said, answering it. “How’d the seminar go? Learn anything—”

  “Oh, Jesus, Nikki. You have to come,” Jessica said into her ear in an uncharacteristically high-pitched voice.

  Stanley licked Nikki’s pant leg where she had spilled bluecheese salad dressing at lunch. “Come where? Stan, stop.” She pushed the dog’s head away. Her linen trousers now had a wet doggy-tongue stain, but at least the oily spot seemed to have disappeared.

  “Tell her to come for supper. We’ll have Ina make fajitas.” Victoria ground out her cigarette in a porcelain ashtray, half-smoked. Always half-smoked. Her way of cutting back.

  “Nikki, please,” Jessica moaned.

  Nikki realized, then, that something was wrong. Seriously wrong. She pushed both dogs off her lap and got to her feet.

  “If she doesn’t want fajitas, I think there’s chicken breasts,” Victoria went on. “Ina can whip up a nice chicken pasta with avocado.”

  Nikki held up her hand to silence her mother. She couldn’t follow two conversations at once. “Jess, what is it? What’s wrong?” There was noise in the background. Male voices. Was that a police siren? “Are you okay?”

  “Jesus, no. No, I’m not okay. I’m scared shitless.”

  She sounded like she was trying to whisper, but with her voice so high-pitched, Nikki could barely understand her. “Tell me where you are. I’ll come right now.”

  “My apartment. Oh, Jesus,” she moaned. “I think they’re going to arrest me. They’re saying I have to get off the phone. I don’t want to go in there. I don’t want to see that again. Not ever.”

  “Or we can do take-out,” Victoria continued, rising from her vanity. She glanced at Stanley and Oliver, sprawled on her carpet. “I suppose doggies do take-out.”

  Mother, Nikki mouthed. She turned away so she could better concentrate on what Jessica was saying. “Who’s going to arrest you? Jess, I can barely hear you. What’s going on? Who’s there with you?”

  “The police. The
paramedics. They’re all here. But I didn’t do it.” She sounded as if she was about to burst into tears. “You have to believe me.”

  “Okay, okay, I’m coming.” Nikki walked back to grab her bag off the floor. Jessica wasn’t making any sense. “I believe you. What didn’t you do?”

  “Kill Rex.”

  Nikki halted abruptly; her purse hit the floor. “Pardon?”

  “I didn’t kill Rex March.”

  She didn’t kill Rex? What was she talking about? Were the police saying she was with Rex when his plane crashed? That was absurd. And impossible. The day he died, Jessica was with her and a thousand other California real estate agents at a convention in San Francisco. “Of course you didn’t kill Rex. He died in a plane crash six months ago. Are you drunk?”

  “I’ve warned that girl about drinking too much.” Victoria waggled her finger at Nikki as she crossed the bedroom to her open closet doors.

  “He’s here, Nikki.”

  There it was again, the shrill voice that raised the hairs on Nikki’s arms. Only now her tone was laced with something akin to desperation. She was scaring Nikki now. “Who’s there, Jess?”

  “Rex.”

  “Rex is there? In your apartment?”

  “What do you think I should wear Wednesday night?” Victoria asked. “The ambassador to Spain is coming. You’ll like him,” she mused, paying no attention whatsoever to the conversation Nikki was having on the phone.

  “Yes, he’s here. He’s here dead,” Jessica said in a tiny voice. “In my bed.”

  Nikki almost dropped the phone. She didn’t mean to sound like an idiot, but all she could do was repeat what Jessica had said. “In your bed?”

  “Someone killed him, Nikki. Not in a plane crash. Here. Today. In my apartment. He was alive and now he’s dead. He’s been murdered and the police think I did it!”

  “I’ll be right there.” Nikki grabbed her bag and raced for the bedroom door. “I have to go, Mother. Jessica has an emergency. I’ll be back for the boys later.”

  “Guess it’s you and me, gentlemen,” Victoria said, nonchalant, as Nikki rushed out the door. “I vote for fajitas. How about you?”

  Chapter 3

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, but you can’t enter the building at this time.” The uniformed LAPD cop took a sidestep to his left, effectively blocking the entire entranceway to Jessica’s Spanish-style garden apartment building with his gorilla body.

  “What if I live here? I can’t enter my own home?” Nikki glanced over her shoulder at the cop cars, their blue lights flashing, parked catty-corner in all the handicapped parking spots out front. There had to be a dozen of them here already and the not-too-distant sirens suggested more were on the way. How many cops did it take to subdue one real estate agent in four-inch stilettos? It was no wonder the LAPD was way over budget again.

  He made no eye contact with her. “I’m sorry, but this property is a crime scene, ma’am. I can’t let you pass.” It sounded like a spiel. Rehearsed many times.

  The knots of onlookers standing in the overgrown, tropical vegetation that surrounded the Hollywood apartment building were growing by the moment. A news van pulled up out front, followed by an ambulance. When she’d first arrived, she’d walked down the alley alongside the building, and she’d seen the apartment parking garage had its own little traffic jam going; cars couldn’t enter or exit. Nikki sensed the rinky-dink circus was about to go three ring. She had to reach Jessica.

  “I understand this is a crime scene.” She gazed up at the cop’s ape face. She wasn’t crazy about the police in general. She’d had a few run-ins with them as a rebellious teen. They’d locked up her opinion of them when they botched her father’s murder investigation. “That’s why I’m trying to get inside.” She tried to remain patient and speak slowly to assure his full comprehension of her simple words. “My friend has been accused of committing said crime.”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t let you pass, ma’am.” He stretched out a hairy arm. “This property is a crime scene.”

  So he didn’t just look like a primate. He had the brains of one. No, to say that would be unfair to the world’s gorilla population; this guy wasn’t that bright. “Look, my friend Jessica Martin, apartment three twenty-two, called me a few minutes ago and asked me to come right away. She said that when she got home from work, there was a dead man in her bed.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am—” King Kong started again.

  “Hey! Aren’t you Nikki Harper?” An LAPD uniformed cop approached them from the building foyer. “Weren’t you in People magazine last week? Some big charity fundraiser at the Regal Biltmore?”

  She shifted her attention to the cop trying to get around gorilla-man. Mid-thirties, average-looking guy.

  “Must have been an old copy. That was weeks ago.”

  “Probably. Dentist’s waiting room.” The cop managed to squeeze past his coworker. “Victoria Bordeaux’s daughter, right?” He pointed at her and grinned slyly.

  “That’s me.” She pushed her sunglasses up on her head, put on her friendly face and glanced over her shoulder again. A local news crew was piling out of the van. Victoria wouldn’t be happy if Nikki’s face was plastered all over the eleven o’clock news. Mother didn’t like bad publicity of any sort and being connected to a murder case would definitely be categorized as bad publicity, even if Jessica was completely innocent.

  “My friend Jessica Martin just called me from inside. She’s scared to death and she’s alone.”

  “The suspect.” The normal-size cop hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his pants. “You know, my mom loves your mom’s films. I gave her one of those DVD boxed sets last year for Christmas. I think it was called Victoria Bordeaux, The Early Years.”

  Again, she offered the smile, the one learned in utero. “I hope she enjoyed them. What a great gift. Hey, listen.” She leaned closer, shooting for quick intimacy. She hated to take advantage of her mother’s celebrity status, but she had to get upstairs. “Do you think I could get inside? My friend is expecting me and I can’t stand out here and wait.” She motioned to the gathering crowd behind them. “Not with the paparazzi.” She made a face as if he understood firsthand the trials of being a household name.

  He looked at the news team quickly setting up a camera next to an overgrown bougainvillea behind the yellow crime-scene tape.

  “I’d really appreciate it, Officer . . .”—she checked out his nameplate—“Syzusky.”

  He thought for a minute, glancing up at his hulky partner, who remained unfazed by Nikki’s celebrity. “The suspect hasn’t been arrested yet. I don’t see why not. Shep, let her pass.”

  The gorilla put out his hand. “This is a crime scene. I’m sorry, but—”

  Nikki slipped under his furry forearm and followed Syzusky into the front foyer of the apartment building. “Thank you so much, Officer Syzusky.”

  He led her across the red travertine tile lobby to the staircase. Several officers milled around. Someone was taking a dinner order for In & Out. Nikki just didn’t get the L.A. obsession with the place. Jessica loved their burgers. She practically lived off them.

  “So, can you tell me what’s going on here, Officer Syzusky?” She spoke quietly, cultivating the sense of intimacy between them.

  “It’s Brian; you can call me Brian.”

  She offered her hand to shake his as they started up the stairs. “Nikki Harper. Of course, you already knew that.” She laughed just the way Jessica did when she was trying to get something out of a man. “Nikki.”

  “I really can’t give you any details. I’m probably putting my ass on the line even taking you up.” A dimple indented his cheek when he grinned. “ ’Scuse my French.”

  “Well, here’s what I know. Jessica Martin called me, asking me to come right away. She said she arrived home to find a dead man in her bed. Rex March.” She met his gaze. “Only the thing that’s got me confused, Brian, is that Rex March is already dead. He died in a plane cra
sh in the Mojave Desert in March. I know that for a fact because I attended his memorial service. I’ve been working for his widow. I sell real estate.”

  “I know. Read it in People.”

  “Right.” The smile. “Soooo, how can Rex March be dead in my friend’s bed?”

  “We’ve been asking ourselves the same question since we got the 911 call.” They reached the second floor and continued up the stairs. “But he looks like Rex March to me.” He frowned and lowered his voice. “You know, I never got into that show of his, Shipwrecked Vacation. Did you?”

  He went on without giving Nikki a chance to respond, which was fine with her since she thought the 70’s syndicated television show that Rex had starred in had been God-awful, even for its day. The man couldn’t act his way out of a wet paper bag. In a monsoon.

  “Now my brother Andrew, he loved it,” Officer Syzusky continued. “Or, at least he loved that girl with the blond hair. What was her name? Teeny. Only she wasn’t so teeny, if you know what I mean. Always wearing that little bikini Junior made for her out of sailcloth the first day they were wrecked.”

  Mercifully, they reached the third floor and entered the hallway. Two EMTs, one on her cell phone, ambled past them and started down the stairs. Apparently there was no rush to get the victim to the hospital. If he was dead, why would there be?

  “So getting back to Rex March.” Nikki headed for Jessica’s apartment at the end of the hall, ignoring the neighbors who stood in their doorways, gawking. She recognized several faces; worse, she knew they recognized hers. “If a memorial service was held for him, how is he in Jessica’s bed right now?”

  “Oh, he’s dead now all right. Big hole where his left eye ought to be.” The cop poked himself in the eye, demonstrating. “And whoever did him knew what they were doing. Killed him instantly, the EMT told me. Murder weapon went right through his eye to his brain and bam!” He smacked his palms together. “Dead as a doornail.”