The Case of the Flashing Fashion Queen ddm-1 Read online

  I turned and walked into my own office.

  I closed the door between our offices. Well, almost closed it. I heard him laugh deeply, while my leather chair made a rude sound as I plunked my ass down on it. Nice, Dix. Chances were Dylan heard that, if not the caller on the other end of the line. Great, now they’ll think I’m incontinent and a farter!

  All I needed now was to … oh, crap!

  Mrs. Presley’s hospitality came back to haunt me. I belched spicy pepperoni.

  Feeling about as attractive as Steve Buscemi, I sighed and turned my attention to my desk. Picking up the yellow legal pad I’d used when Jennifer Weatherby had been in the office, I examined my doodles. Stairs going nowhere; tight little circles. The crazy, meandering duck tracks. For some reason, I wanted to laugh. And not a good laugh.

  “That’s it! I’ll just hand this over to Detective Head,” I muttered to myself. “There you go, Detective! Proof positive Jennifer Weatherby was in my office. Case closed against Dix Dodd, your friendly neighborhood ball-buster!”

  “Dix?” Dylan called from the outer office. “Did you say something?”

  Damn. “I said I need another good … wall duster.” The smack of my hand to my forehead felt just about right.

  He resumed his conversation, and I went back to glowering at my yellow pad.

  About five minutes later, Dylan’s voice went lower and I couldn’t even make out bits and pieces of the conversation. Not that I’d been listening — like, a lot. I heard his deep chuckle — the one that just rolled itself up my spine. He hung up and before I could adjust my position from straining forward in my chair to casually leaning back with my feet up on the desk, the door opened.

  “Sorry about that,” he said, looking anything but sorry. “We’re busy as hell, I know, but I really had to take that call.”

  “No problem,” I said. “You know I don’t mind personal calls at the office. Not at all.”

  Now was the time for Dylan to tell me it wasn’t a personal call. I waited. I waited some more.

  “Thanks.” He smiled.

  “Sure.” I couldn’t resist. But nor could I look at him as I asked. “How is your mother, anyway?”

  “Great, Dix. Mother’s great.”

  “So nice of her to call.”

  “She didn’t.”

  Oh, wonderful, Dodd. Real mature!

  It wasn’t that I couldn’t read his expression, it’s that he didn’t really have one. He was offering neither excuse nor explanation.

  But I noticed he wasn’t looking at me either as he’d answered — his eyes were staring into his own yellow legal pad full of notes.

  I quickly (quickly before I said something even more stupid) told Dylan what I had learned from Mrs. Presley: that Billy Star had been a frequent visitor to the Underhill. With a blonde. Dylan, of course, pointed out there were lots of blondes in the world.

  “Maybe our boy Billy was with a hooker,” Dylan offered. “A blonde favorite, perhaps?”

  I shook my head. “Hookers don’t hide down in the seat and send the john in to register. It works the other way around. No, Mrs. Presley was positive she wasn’t a prostitute, a regular or otherwise. And with her years at the desk of the Underhill, she would certainly know.”

  “Maybe Star had himself an under-aged girlfriend.”

  I considered that for a moment. But only a moment. I knew Mrs. Presley. If there were any underage hanky-panky going on, well, it wouldn’t be for long.

  But what was the connection between Billy Star, Ned Weatherby, the late Mrs. Jennifer Weatherby and the blonde mistress we sought? I guess it could be coincidental, but it sure as hell didn’t feel coincidental. It felt like there should be a connection there.

  “Maybe we were right,” I mused. “Maybe Billy and Ned were fighting over the same woman.”

  “Our mysterious mistress?”

  “Yeah, Blondie gets around.”

  He sighed. “I don’t know. I mean, that theory was just some wild speculation. And well, it kind of seems far fetched.”

  “Far fetched is all we’ve got to go on, Dylan.”

  I cleared my throat.

  As if reading my mind, Dylan strode to the coffee pot in the corner. Ever ready, he flicked a switch and the hardest working thing in the office kicked into gear.

  “What did you find out from talking to the neighbors?” I asked.

  “It was interesting, to say the least.”

  “How so?”

  He ran a hand over his chin, drawing it long. He often did this when carefully arranging his words. “According to everyone I talked to, they hardly knew Jennifer Weatherby.”

  “Hardly surprising. I mean in this day and age, it’s not like people sit out on their front porch swings and chat over lemonade.”

  “Still, you’d think she’d have at least one friend in the neighborhood. But there was … I don’t know … almost an animosity towards Jennifer.”

  I could feel my eyebrows arching. “Anything specific?”

  The coffee gurgled and started sputtering into the pot and I silently blessed it.

  “From what I understand, Mrs. Weatherby didn’t much get along with the other rich ladies on Ashfield Drive. She wasn’t one of them.”

  “Old money versus new money?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think so. The homes are new out that way, so it’s all new money. No, I think Jennifer was just one of those women that didn’t fit in. You know, not the wine and cheese and charity ball kind of chick.”

  Dylan Foreman was one of those rare guys who could say ‘chick’ and not have it sound condescending. Actually, he made it sound downright sexy. Granted, he could probably make rice pudding sound sexy.

  I shook my head to clear my thoughts. “Any specific incidents that would have made her enemies?”

  “None that I could uncover. Just general stuff. You know, not attending neighborhood functions, not sending cards at Christmas, or pretending she didn’t know the neighbors when they met at Ryder’s.”

  “Ryder’s on Main?” Ryder’s was about as high end as it got, unless you wanted to jet off to New York or Paris.

  He nodded. “Apparently, that’s where all the ladies of Ashfield Drive shop. And apparently, whenever Jennifer bumped into one of them, she’d duck out of the store as quickly as possible. Wouldn’t even say hi.”

  “Ryder’s,” I repeated.

  On the one hand, it didn’t really surprise me that Jennifer Weatherby shopped at Ryder’s. She could certainly afford it. On the other hand, when she’d come to my office, she’d looked anything but stylishly dressed.

  Stress? Maybe. It could do a helluva number on a person.

  The coffee was ready, and I poured Dylan a mug as I got my own. “So Jennifer Weatherby wasn’t popular with the ladies of Ashfield Drive. But did anyone hate her enough to kill her?”

  “They’re a cliquey bunch,” he said. “But no. I don’t think anyone wanted her dead.”

  I steered the conversation back to Billy Star, frequent flyer at the Underhill, and his skulking blonde date. Again we tossed around the theory that the heated argument between Billy Star and Ned Weatherby had been over the same woman.

  “Long shot,” he said.

  “It’s a shot though.” I held the cup in both hands, warming them even though they were far from cold.

  Dylan nodded. “Okay, where do we go from here?”

  The phone rang just exactly as I opened my mouth to speak.

  Dylan rose to get it in the outer office. A bit too quickly.

  “Here,” I said. “I’ll get it.”

  I thought it must be the same woman calling for Dylan again. This time, I was determined to show how mature I was. Coolest boss EVER. How what-a-great-boss-who-isn’t-hot-for-her-much-younger-assistant I was. And this time, I wouldn’t ask if it was his mother. I picked up the receiver before the second ring finished.

  “Dix Dodd speaking.”

  “Well if it isn’t the she-stalker herself.”

  Ah, fuck!

  “Hello, Dickhead,” I said. “How goes the quitting smoking? Bet you’d like one right now, huh?” Yes, it was dirty, but a girl had to score her points where she could. “Why don’t I go pick you up a pack? I could have them delivered. Ahhh, can’t you just feel that lovely tar filling your lungs right now?”

  He laughed. Not his belly-shaking, everyone-run-here laugh, but a deep chuckle that unnerved me.

  “Funny, Dixieland,” he said. “Very funny. And here I was calling to give you some information. Just trying to be friendly.”

  Said the python to the rat.

  “What’s up?” I asked, cautiously curious.

  “I just got off the phone with Ned Weatherby. He gave me his wife’s itinerary for the last week.” Detective Head paused, dramatically. My heart began to race.

  “Well, good for you, Dick!” I said. “Itinerary’s a pretty big word! Five syllables! Call back next week and we’ll work on….” — oh, shit, what was a good six-syllable word? — “…an even bigger word.”

  Okay, yes, the world’s dumbest retort. But I was getting a little stressed here; he was so happy. Just what did Dickhead know that I didn’t?

  I forced up a chuckle.

  “Laugh all you want now, Dix Dodd,” Detective Head said. “You won’t be laughing for long.”

  “You going to get to the point today, Detective?”

  “The point is that Jennifer Weatherby wasn’t anywhere near your office on Monday. The late Mrs. Weatherby was at the Bombay Spa for her weekly treatments. Left early in the morning, came home late at night. You lied, Dix. There is no way in hell that she was in your office.”

  I could feel my grip on calm slipping. Dylan moved closer, his gaze intent on my face, no doubt reading the growing panic there. “There has to be a mistake….”

  “The mistake is you messed with the wrong people, Dix. I’m going to haul you in.”

  “Give me forty-eight hours.” The words were out before I’d clearly thought them over.

  “Why should I?” Dickhead asked, clearly enjoying himself.

  “Because I’ll deliver the murderer to you by then.”

  Now I appreciated his pause. He was thinking it over. And then I realized: there were no blaring sirens on the way to pick me up. No cops banging on the door. No police dogs sniffing my car. Detective Head, through he would dearly love to see me in jail, wouldn’t let the real killer get away.

  “Okay,” he grumbled. “You got your forty-eight hours.” Then he hung up the phone.

  “Where do we go from here, Dylan?” God, was it just two minutes ago that he’d put that question to me? It felt like hours. I swallowed hard, but when I spoke, my voice was as strong as I could make it. “I’ll tell you where we’re going. To the Bombay Spa.”

  Dylan slowly nodded, erased the whiteboard and we began again.

  And when the phone rang, we ignored the damn thing.

  Chapter 7

  Forty-eight hours.

  Not too damn much time to save my butt. But it would be enough. It had to be.

  As we sat down to brainstorm, it was clear that Dylan shared my anxiety.

  Here’s the thing about Dylan — he’s not just good to look at; he’s pretty damned good at this job. He is always intensely committed to solving the mystery at hand. I’ll confess that over the period of our association, I’ve enjoyed watching him apply himself to a puzzle. There is something positively fascinating about watching an intelligent guy think. You can almost see the wheels churning, the adrenaline rushing. But this time, with this case … well, I’d never seen him look so fiercely focused as we went over the details and attempted to chart the life of Mrs. Weatherby.

  You’d think at first glance that Jennifer Weatherby had lived a fairytale existence. She’d grown up dirt poor, the stereotypical girl from the wrong side of the tracks. When she was barely twenty-one, she’d married the dashing young businessman, Ned Weatherby. Rumor had it that Ned’s parents had never thought Jennifer was good enough for their Neddy, but he had fallen head over heels for the young and beautiful Jennifer. And some say it was Jennifer’s fear of being poor again that lead Ned to work so hard, and be so ruthless in business over the years. To keep the dragons at bay.

  After Ned had made the millions, Jennifer’s life seemed to revolve around shopping at the most exclusive boutiques and spending her days at the Bombay Spa. Literally rags to riches. Safe and perfect.

  But I never trusted fairytales. Too simplistic. Too black and white.

  I’d been the one in grade school who’d scoffed all the way through the Sleeping Beauty play, finally yelling, “Wake the hell up!” After which, of course, I was escorted out of the tiny gymnasium. Little Red Riding Hood drove me nuts; she should have pulled a gun out of her handbag and just shot the damn wolf. Now that would have been happily ever after. Clint Eastwood style happily ever after, but … well, it would have put a smile on my face.

  And I really, really didn’t like Cinderella.

  I never thought of it as a story of princess meets prince, falls in love. It just drove me crazy that Cinderella morphed into something to capture the heart of her true love, and that the fairy Godmother helped her do it! I mean, shouldn’t she have shown up in her everyday clothes and seen what old Prince Charming thought of her then?

  But yet, we all do that, don’t we? We dress to impress. Play the part according to the audience. And yeah, okay, we judge on first impressions.

  And whereas I was on my way to the Bombay Spa, I knew I’d have to play the part too. No way could I go in as Dix Dodd, Private Detective, with her assistant, Dylan Foreman. That would make me an outsider.

  No, I would enter the spa as Dixie Davenport, rich bitch, needing a day of pampering. Rest and relaxation. Small talk and gossip. I had the wardrobe for it (okay, one outfit, an authentic Chanel charcoal blazer and pant suit that made me look like a million bucks rather than the hundred bucks I’d paid for it at a fire sale, and a decent pair of black pumps), and I could fake the attitude. Just throw those shoulders back, lift the chin and pretend you smell something vaguely unpleasant. And gossip? I could hold my own with the best of them. If there were any juicy details to be learned about the fairytale life of Jennifer Weatherby, I’d ferret them out.

  When I called the spa and told them that I wanted to book for that very afternoon, I was told there was nothing available. The waiting list to get in was at least a month long. Remember those winged bills that had been flying overhead? My big payday? Well, they started flying toward the spa.

  I told a few lies about being the wife of a movie producer from Hollywood, a producer who hoped to be shooting a Matt Damon thriller in the area. But, maybe I should tell hubby dearest to reconsider. No way could we make our temporary home in a podunk town where I couldn’t get an appointment at the spa when I so desperately needed one.

  The little squeally shriek that followed half convinced me the receptionist was having an orgasm. She put me on hold. Less than two minutes later, she came back on the line to inform me that they would certainly make an exception for any friend of Mr. Damon’s.

  That’s how I got myself into the Bombay.

  Dylan? Well, no way in hell would he sit around and be left behind.

  “And just how,” I’d asked, “do you propose to get in there? The clientele are all female.”

  “Way ahead of you, Dix.” He had smiled. “I called the head of personnel. They’re hiring.”

  “You got yourself an interview, just like that?”

  “An interview?” He looked insulted. “Are you kidding? With my qualifications, I was hired on the spot, over the telephone.”

  I didn’t even ask which qualification he was referring too.

  +++

  I was appropriately gushed over as I entered the spa. One attendant took my coat, which I shoulder-shrugged out of perfectly. I caught the staffer sneaking a glance at the coat’s tags, which made me glad I’d had the forethought to stitch a Hilary Radley label scavenged from a vintage coat I’d picked up at a yard sale over the real label. Another staffer offered me an herbal tea, which I declined with a wordless wave. I was then escorted to the office, where a nervous, bone-thin redhead in a thousand dollar pantsuit did her best to accommodate. Her name was Ms. Pipps, and she was as efficient as her name sounded. Crisply efficient. On such short notice, they’d put together a pretty comprehensive spa day. I’d start with a massage, move on to a mud wrap, followed by a manicure and pedicure, then a full facial. I ordered the lemon chicken for lunch, which I’d have out on the terrace.

  But even as I made these elaborate arrangements, I had no intention of sticking out the day. I’d stick it out only as long as it took to get what I wanted. Then I’d pay up, drop the rich chick persona, grab a Big Mac and head back to the office.

  “So a friend of mine comes here,” I said, hoping to pique the interest of the redhead.

  “Oh? Who would that be?”

  “Jennifer Weatherby.”

  Ms. Pipps clapped her hands together forcefully, which scared the crap out of me, for I thought I heard something snap in her bony hands. “Yes, Jennifer Weatherby has graced the Bombay Spa with her presence on many occasions. She’s taken advantage of not only our wonderful services and full line of beauty and relaxation products, but also the warm hospitality that is the Bombay’s trademark.”

  I’d get nothing here. And it wasn’t just the canned promo that the Redhead no doubt gave to everyone. It was the expression on her face — or rather lack of expression.

  “I have another friend who’s spoken of this place.”

  “Oh? Who would that be?”

  “Justine Smithee. Married to Alan Smithee, the famous Hollywood director. Does that ring a bell?”

  She clapped her hands again. “Oh, my goodness, yes. Justine has graced the Bombay Spa with her presence on many occasions….”

  I tuned her out after that. I mean, I could have said Fanny Fartsalot or Ima Hoare and she’d have given me the same spiel.

  Redhead insisted I must start with the top-to-toe relaxing massage. She assured me the Bombay was famous for their massages. Surely I’d heard that from Mrs. Smithee? I’d agreed, mainly because I wanted to play the part well. I mean, every day at the spa began with a relaxing massage, didn’t it?