Dead Ex Read online

  I had a proprietary interest in Rex and Tricia’s house, having seen it through the last stages of the building process, and wasn’t prepared for how different it looked, overrun with people other than the paint crew.

  There was little furniture, as Rex and Tricia had recently returned from their Hawaiian honeymoon, but a grand piano dominated the living room, its black finish so polished you could check your lipstick in it. A tuxedoed pianist was playing the theme from The Godfather. A tuxedoed catering staff moved among the guests, serving hors d’oeuvres. Fredreeq and I followed a tray of bacon-wrapped cherry tomatoes into the

  kitchen.

  “Everyone here’s talking about David,” Fredreeq said. “Big soap

  crowd.”

  1 0 H A R L E Y J A N E K O Z A K

  David had produced At the End of the Day, a soap opera I’d tried to watch when I dated him, especially since Joey was acting in it. But I’d never acquired the taste for soaps, so eventually I gave up, after Joey ad-mitted she never watched either. David had begun as an actor on the show, then directed a few episodes, then stopped acting altogether to produce. It wasn’t a normal career trajectory, but it wasn’t unheard of either, actor-director-producer: David had been, in Hollywood terms, a

  “hyphenate.”

  We found Rex, our host, and I was swept into a bear hug. He was a big guy, nearly as tall as Simon, an extroverted, transplanted Texan. He went on to hug Fredreeq, dislodging her turban, so he didn’t see me staring at the walls.

  I’d spent weeks in this kitchen painting a mural of frogs. Now, in their place, were white walls. Someone had painted over my work.

  I felt ill. I grabbed a black granite counter for support, wondering if I might throw up onto the tray of potato pancakes with caviar being assembled in front of me.

  Rex and Tricia had paid me in full for the frogs, and then they’d whited them out. I would give back the money. I would leave now and send them a nice note in the morning, with a check enclosed. I was about to grab Fredreeq and explain why I had to go—explain it before she could look up and say, “Where are those damn frogs?”—when a guy in a baseball cap placed a glass mug in my hand.

  “Grugg.”

  “I beg your pardon?” I said.

  “Grugg. Watch out, it’s hot.”

  “You mean glögg?”

  “Yeah, maybe. Tricia said everyone’s gotta try it.” He indicated an enormous punch bowl. “Want any of the floaty stuff?”

  “What is the floaty stuff?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Prunes and stuff. Tricia made it. Well, that’s what she said. She probably means some servant did.” I caught a glimpse of the face underneath the baseball cap. He was young—late teens, maybe—

  and extravagantly good-looking, making me think he must be in soaps.

  Tricia herself was in soaps, I remembered. Maybe everyone here but Fredreeq and me was connected to soaps.

  Before I could taste my glögg, I was hit by a wave of Opium. Two

  D E A D E X 1 1

  thin arms wrapped themselves around me, jingling with bangle bracelets, and I was in the embrace of a total stranger. A small, thin, heavily scented, jeweled stranger.

  “Wollie!” a melodious voice said. “Tell me you’re Wollie.”

  “I’m Wollie,” I said.

  “Wollie, my frog woman. It’s me. Tricia. Your patron.” She held on to me, but extended her arms in a “let me look at you” manner. She said,

  “My, you’re tall.” She glanced at my feet. “Oh, you’re in heels, but still.

  You must be six feet. Are you six feet? Is she six feet, Trey?”

  The handsome kid eyed me.

  “I’m six feet,” I said. Give or take a centimeter.

  “Well, I wish you’d give me some of that height. I’m five-two. I look like a third grader next to Rex. Rex!” she called. “Here’s Wollie!”

  “I know, darlin’. I’ve already hugged her neck.”

  “God, isn’t he a stitch?” She turned back to me. “I love it when he talks Texan. Now let me get you a big-girl drink and you tell me all about yourself. Did you see the honeymoon shots? They’re being projected in the screening room. And you must try the beef satay—Rex calls it skewer of cow—and the unveiling’s at seven-thirty, and oh—did you hear about poor David Zetrakis? Did you know him?”

  “I slept with him.” I had no idea what made me reveal that.

  She nodded. “I did too. Long before the cancer, of course. He was supposed to come tonight. No one knows if it was suicide or murder, but we have the news anchor here, Angel Ramirez, so as soon as the press knows, we’ll know. She’s been on the phone all night. She’s out by the pool, getting better reception. So anyway, Wollie, I want to hear all about you.”

  “Well—” I began, but just then Tricia flew from my side shrieking,

  “Tony! Genie!” arms outstretched and bangles jangling, to greet others.

  Was murder less horrible if the victim was terminally ill? I wanted to discuss it with Fredreeq and wandered out to the pool in search of her.

  A dozen or so people huddled around patio heaters, eight of them on cell phones.

  “You’re Wollie Shelley, aren’t you?” a woman asked, perched at a cocktail table. She was smoking, a pastime that many L.A. parties, along with restaurants, banish to the great outdoors. “I’m Jen Kim, I produce At the End of the Day and SoapDirt. ”

  “I’m sorry . . . what?”

  1 2 H A R L E Y J A N E K O Z A K

  “SoapDirt. The show Tricia hosts.”

  “I thought Tricia was on a soap. As an actress.”

  Jen Kim nodded, exhaling smoke through her nose. She was pretty

  and Asian and looked too young to be producing anything. Or smoking.

  “Tricia stars in At the End of the Day Monday through Thursday. Friday she tapes SoapDirt. You should watch it because—”

  “Ladies. Gentlemen.” A big guy in a red turtleneck stood in the doorway with a bullhorn. “This is a five-minute warning. Please make your way to the kitchen for the unveiling.” He reentered the house, limping.

  “—because I’m looking for someone.” Jen Kim pulled a business card from her Kate Spade purse and handed it to me. “I think you’re it. Got a card?”

  I always have business cards on me. Jen took the one I offered, stubbed out her cigarette, and said good-bye, following the man in the red turtleneck.

  This whole party was a mistake, I decided, making my way into the house with the other poolside guests. I was only here out of respect for Rex, who’d hired me when I needed a job. I knew no one else but

  Fredreeq, who I could see anytime, I was being mistaken for whoever it was Jen Kim thought I was, I was depressed about David, upset about my frogs, and I needed some quality sleep, as Simon and I had been burning the candle at both ends for weeks. I’d sneak out and call Fredreeq from my car to explain my disappearance.

  I went out the front door and gave my parking stub to the valet guy.

  While waiting, I called Simon, and I was leaving him a sexually suggestive message when the man with the bullhorn came and stood beside me.

  “Wollie?” he said. “You’re not leaving, are you?”

  How did everyone know my name? Was there a sign taped to my back?

  “Do I know you?” I asked.

  “Max Freund.” He shook my hand with a hearty grip. “I work with

  Tricia. I’m a stage manager, so I’ve been sent to round up the cast and crew. For the unveiling.”

  “I was leaving. I’m not feeling well, so I thought I’d make a quiet exit, but I guess I—”

  “—could endure another ten minutes? Thank you. I’m sorry you’re

  not well.”

  D E A D E X 1 3

  “It’s nothing physical. It has to do with . . . a friend of mine died today.”

  “David Zetrakis?” At my nod, he put an arm around me. “I knew him twenty-seven years. We grew up in the business. He acted, I stage-
managed. He directed, I stage-managed. He produced, I stage-managed.

  Most everyone here knew David. Think of it as a wake.”

  I didn’t see Tricia approving that description. “We better go in for the unveiling. You gave a five-minute warning seven minutes ago. What’s being unveiled, anyway?”

  Max smiled, a warm grin on a craggy face. “You don’t know? Then I won’t spoil it. But they won’t start without us. I’m the stage manager.

  And you, my dear, are the star.”

  • • •

  Passing the living room, Max gestured to the pianist with his bullhorn.

  The music went from Pachelbel’s Canon to “Joy to the World”—the

  Three Dog Night version, with the opening lyrics “Jeremiah was a bull-frog,” which the pianist belted out in an operatic voice.

  We entered the kitchen to a smattering of applause. The kitchen area opened into the dining room, so it held the entire party. Rex was center stage, standing on a step stool.

  “Wollie, I was just saying how you’re the girl who gave me the nick-name Rex Stetson, which I adopted when I moved here. Tricia never would’ve dated me if I’d stayed Maurice.”

  “You got that right!” Tricia said. With Rex on the step stool, she was half his height. She acknowledged the laughter, basking in its glow, reminding me for some reason of a poodle. A greeting card began to form in my mind, a dog and its trainer at the Westminster Kennel Club dog show, but Rex was talking again and gesturing toward the wall behind him.

  I saw that this section of wall, unlike the others, was covered with a drape.

  “Now, y’all have known Tricia,” Rex said, “lots longer than me, everyone in her soap family. So y’all know how she feels about frogs. Her dressing room at the studio, it’s straight out of National Geographic, and I wanted her to feel as much at home here as she does there. You can

  1 4 H A R L E Y J A N E K O Z A K

  meet her live frogs in the sunroom, but these two here are my favorites.

  Ladies and gentlemen . . . portrait of Rex and Tricia.”

  The white drape lifted to reveal Conraua (Gigantorana) goliath and Dendrobates azureus. The former was a frog I’d painted in gargantuan proportions, due to a math error, and the latter a small, cuddly thing, bright blue with black spots. Together they were a pair so bizarre I’d nearly painted over them. But here they were, the only survivors of my mural, and someone had added the words Rex and Tricia beneath them, in ornate gold letters.

  The crowd responded with oohs and aahs and laughter and I was

  congratulated. I’d had no clue that Rex and Tricia were of such disparate sizes as to resemble the West African goliath and the blue poison-arrow and hadn’t meant to satirize them, but that’s the thing about art. You do what you do, and people read into it what they read into it. Of course, captions are everything; no one knows that better than a greeting card artist. I wasn’t used to being captioned by someone else, but being mistaken for a genius isn’t the worst fate in the world.

  “A masterpiece,” declared a man next to me. “The only thing of value in this dreadful house. Edifice Rex. Who is the artist?”

  A masterpiece? Had I wandered into my own infomercial? “I’m the

  artist,” I said, introducing myself. The man introduced himself in turn, as Sheffo Corminiak.

  Sheffo was in his seventies at least, a fragile little fellow with a sloppiness that suggested poverty. But the suit jacket over his arm, its tag exposed, was Armani. “What was your frog background prior to this opus?”

  he asked.

  “I didn’t know squat about frogs when I began.”

  He studied me. “And tell me, what do you know about Greek myth-

  ology?”

  “Nothing, except in a high school world history sort of way.”

  Sheffo was now staring with an intensity uncommon in cocktail party acquaintances. “Yes,” he whispered. “It is you. This shall work out very well indeed.” Then, in a brisk tone: “I should like to hire you, Willie.”

  “Wollie,” I said, correcting him. “In what capacity?”

  “As an artist, of course. Have you an opening in your schedule?”

  I had nothing but openings, I had a schedule full of holes, but why

  D E A D E X 1 5

  disclose that to—Sluggo? Sheffo. I opened my purse. “Here’s my card. Is it frogs you’re interested in?”

  “It is gods, woman. Gods, demigods, kings. And common mortals of the heroic variety. All things Greek, in or around the period of twelve hundred b.c. I live on Mount Olympus.”

  “Hmm.” He was drunk, I realized. And possibly delusional. I’ve spent a lot of time around mental illness, so delusions don’t distress me.

  “Electra Drive, before Hercules. Do you know it? I have a retaining wall.”

  “Oh!” I did a quick mental revision. Mount Olympus was a neigh-

  borhood in the hills above Hollywood Boulevard. I’d seen the sign whenever I was stuck in traffic on Laurel Canyon and always wondered about it. Was it all Greek themed, right down to the retaining walls? “It’s okay with you that I know next to nothing about the Greeks?”

  “Ignorance!” he cried. “Yes! From the Latin ignorare. You have here-tofore ignored the Greeks, but now you shall open yourself to them and call forth oracular vision. The gods speak to the simple and ignorant as well as to the mighty. Your frogs are marvelously primitive.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  He patted my hand. “A lovely lack of hubris. Come to the house.

  We’ll discuss terms.”

  We agreed on the next afternoon. “Pay attention,” Sheffo whispered.

  “You’ll now begin to see Greeks everywhere. It is the gods, speaking to you. They surround us. Watch. Listen.” Sheffo shuffled off to freshen his drink, passing Fredreeq on her way into the kitchen.

  “Have you seen the swamproom?” she asked. “Oh, excuse me. Sun-

  room. I heard Tricia sunk twenty grand into it. Flew in frogs first-class from other countries. Makes you think twice about shaking hands with her. Hey, heard any gossip about David’s suicide?”

  I straightened her turban. “It wasn’t suicide. It was murder. I happen to know that—”

  “Did Sheffo Corminiak tell you that?”

  “Who is Sheffo Corminiak, by the way?” I said.

  “August Wrenside. On At the End of the Day, the family patriarch. He also did Search, GL, GH, Days, and AMC, in the olden days. He’s two hundred years old.”

  1 6 H A R L E Y J A N E K O Z A K

  I didn’t know the significance of all those initials, but I was glad Sheffo was gainfully employed. That’s an issue for an independent con-tractor, whether the client can actually cough up money. Not that I charged much, but I’d hate to be taking his Social Security check. I told Fredreeq about the proposed mural.

  “Hmm,” she said. “Yes, it’s good for you to keep working. You can stop once you marry Simon. That man’s clearly got family money, so you won’t need a job.”

  “I’m not marrying Simon. We’ve only been dating three weeks.”

  “Shacking up three weeks. And the way he looks at you, if you can’t get him to pop the question, you’re no protégée of mine. The sooner the better. Because like sands through the hourglass, so are your childbear-ing days. You’re not thirty anymore.”

  Thank God Simon wasn’t hearing this. “Fredreeq, I appreciate the—”

  “Go to hell, Horowitz!” The gravelly voice carried into the sunroom, stopping conversation.

  Joey.

  Fredreeq and I stared at each other. Then I grabbed her arm and

  headed down the hall.

  In the living room was Joey, dressed in ripped jeans, T-shirt, leather jacket, and cowboy boots, the kind of cocktail party attire affected only by the very beautiful and/or very confident. Joey was both, but at the moment she was also tear-streaked, red-faced, and angry.

  Her husband was near the piano, hands raised in a placa
ting gesture.

  Elliot Horowitz was dressed more appropriately than his wife, in a suit, but minus a tie. He looked every inch the Harvard MBA he was—not the pocket-protector kind, the kind who made his first million two years after graduating. He also looked unhappy. “Joey,” he said, “control yourself.”

  “Control myself ? Control your self, you priapic, philandering prick.”

  “That’s redundant,” he said.

  “You’re redundant, sleeping with everyone on the Westside, you—”

  Joey’s wiry body was twitching with rage. Rex put a calming hand on her shoulder and she whirled around like she was going to hit him, then stopped. “Sorry, Rex. Bad day. I shouldn’t’ve—”

  Rex hugged her and gestured to the pianist. The song “People” started,

  D E A D E X 1 7

  then stopped, as if the pianist had had second thoughts. He began again, with “Here Comes Santa Claus.”

  “She’s drunk,” Elliot said in the pause between songs, and his words carried.

  Joey disengaged from Rex, grabbed a pitcher of glögg from a passing waiter, turned, and hurled it at her husband. She had good aim, but Elliot had good reflexes. He dodged to the right, getting hit with only a spray of airborne glögg and a couple of blanched almonds.

  The pitcher and remaining glögg, along with soaked prunes, raisins, cinnamon sticks, and cardamom pods, hit the top of the raised grand piano and crashed into the exposed strings.

  The music stopped.

  F o u r

  Bloodcurdling screams rose from the throat of Tricia, attesting to a long career on the soap opera set. “My Bösendorfer!” she cried.

  “Her what?” Fredreeq asked, but I was already on my way to Joey. Rex brushed past me to help Tricia, who was shoveling fruit and nuts out of the concert grand.

  “Towels!” Tricia shrieked. “Hot, soapy water!”

  “Damn.” Joey leaned against the doorjamb. “Call the piano para-

  medics.”

  “Come on,” I said, tugging on her arm. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “No, I gotta apologize to Rex.”

  “Later,” I said. “After Tricia’s sedated. Come on.”

  “Bathroom first.”

  An advantage of having worked in the mansion was that I knew the location of at least eleven bathrooms. I led Joey upstairs. As we entered a bedroom, a couple emerged from a walk-in closet, looked at us, and disappeared back into it. “Hey, Clay. What’s up? Pharmaceuticals?” Joey called out, then said to me, “Prop guy. Always has good drugs.”