Kill the Mother!. Michael Mallory
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her figure, or had grown used to it, and although I had known him but a few minutes, my money was on the former.
Forcing myself to concentrate on her face, I saw that her upper lip was a little too large to be natural. Clearly she had undergone a collagen treatment, but the end result was to turn her lips into a parody of her body: heavy on top, light on the bottom. Maybe that was the point. She bounced out of the room, and I continued to gape at her with every step.
“She has a boyfriend, you know,” Holving said, passing over the paper containing Leslie Brielle’s information.
“Oh, yeah, well…she’d have to, wouldn’t she?” I stammered, trying not to blush. “She kind of overdid the lip, though.”
“I really don’t like to gossip about my staff,” he replied.
“Sorry.”
“But you’re right, she did. God knows why. She was cute enough before doing it. The guys around here who care were dropping down and biting sticks in half just at the sight of her. When she first got the lip done, though, I thought she’d been assaulted in the parking lot.”
“How much does a procedure like that cost?”
“Cost? I don’t know. Why? Are you thinking of plumping your lips?”
“No, I’m just wondering where she got the money for it. Does Max Gelfan pay everyone so well that the assistants can afford cosmetic tweaks?”
His face darkened, and I could see him trying to follow my thoughts. “What are you suggesting?” he asked.
“You believe that someone in this office is passing information onto Nora Frost without your knowledge, someone with access to all the phone numbers. Someone who might be compensated under the table.”
“Good god, you think Nora was paying her to be informed about callbacks?”
“Would you put it past Nora?”
“No, but I’d like to be able to put it past Janelle.”
“There’s one easy way to test her,” I said, and then outlined a plan to him, to which he listened with a grim expression.
“All right,” Holving said. “We’ll walk out past her desk.” Getting up, he led me down a different maze-like hallway, until we came to a reception desk at which Janelle was seated. Somehow, the affect of her torso was even more enhanced while seated. “So,” Holving began, following my plan, “if you would tell Leslie that we’d really like to see her and Lexy on Friday, that would be great. Two in the afternoon. We’ll call the others from here.”
“Will do,” I said. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Holving.” As he headed back to his office, I turned to Janelle and smiled. “Nice meeting you,” I said. “Um, could you tell me how to get out of here?”
“Sure,” she said, standing up and shading the desk. “Go down here, turn left, and you’ll come to the elevator. It will take you down to the lobby.”
Thanking her, I set out into the labyrinth. Fortunately, her directions were correct, and hopefully, she did not realize she was being set up. I had no intention of telling Leslie Brielle anything about an audition on the twenty-fourth, but if Nora and the boys suddenly showed up at two o’clock on Friday we would know there was only one place she could have gotten the information. I hoped I was not getting Janelle fired. Then again, I doubted she would be out of work long, as she appeared to possess the natural attributes for getting ahead in Hollywood that have been in place since the days of Mack Sennett.
As I went back to my car, which I was glad to see was still there, and unticketed (the police in Hollywood materialized out of thin air to cite you and then disappeared in a puff of smoke, like Nightcrawler in X-Men). It was like a sauna inside the car, which is what happens when you leave your wheels out on warm day and forget to crack the windows open. I turned on the engine and blasted the air as I sat behind the wheel and thought. It was seeming less than likely that any of the other mothers had sent that letter since it was the boys who were the focus of the threat, while everyone’s anger, at least those I had spoken with, seemed to be directed toward Nora herself. Despite his protestations, Terrence Holving, or perhaps someone on the staff I had not yet met, were higher on the suspect list. Holving, at least, had a reason for not wanting her to bring the twins back in.
Then another possibility entered my mind. It was one I didn’t like much, but it was not impossible. And, as Holving had said, threatening the Alpha Brothers like that would have been a way of giving them publicity. It also explained why their names were spelled out in the letter. Pulling out my cell phone I poked in Nora’s number, but got only her answering machine. I didn’t bother leaving a message. Instead I decided to go over to her house. If she wasn’t home, I’d wait. I would like to get my ominous suspicion cleared up as soon as possible.
It took almost as long to get to her house in Los Feliz from Gelfan Productions as it had to get to the Gelfan’s from the valley, thanks to the omnipresent city work crews that were tearing up half of the streets in Hollywood. On the way I was nearly broadsided by another driver, who apparently thought the red light was an early Christmas decoration. That was the price for living in Los Angeles: a near death experience every time you went out on the streets, but the heat’s dry.
Nora’s Lexus was there, so she was home. I was not looking forward to this, but, as Bogie might have once said, I don’t like being played for a chump.
If, as I was starting to suspect, Nora herself wrote that letter and hired me as part of a hoax to get publicity for the boys, I wanted to find out and then get out as soon as possible. I had no compunctions about keeping her money, either. Nora Faust had paid me handsomely to discover the source of the letter; if it turned out that she was the source of the letter, I had still fulfilled my duty.
Parking behind her car, I got out and went up to the front door, but saw that there was no need to hit the doorbell or knock. The door was half open. “Nora,” I called, but received no reply. I went ahead and knocked loudly on the open door. “Nora, are you there?” Nothing.
I went inside the foyer. The house was dark and still as the proverbial tomb. “Nora?” I called. “The door was open, so I came in.” There was no reply. Maybe she was in the bathroom, unaware that the front door was hanging open, and she was going to panic upon hearing me and pull a gun on me. “Is anyone here?” I called again. “Nora? Taylor? Burton?” What was the name of Nora’s assistant? Elena, that was it…like Elena Verdugo, the teenaged star of House of Frankenstein. “Elena?” I called, and received no reply.
I carefully moved into the dining room, and then toward the kitchen, which was also dark and empty. The only sound coming from it was that of ice cubes being dropped into the ice dispenser. I called everyone’s name again, but somehow knew that nobody was going to answer me.
That was when I smelled it. “Oh, sheez, no,” I muttered.
You see, unlike all the books, plays and movies in which bodies are hidden indefinitely somewhere in a house, and nobody knows they are there until they happen to stumble upon them, in real life bodies have a definitive calling card: they stink. Immediately upon dying a person’s bowels and bladder are released, a scent that is rather hard to miss. That latrine stench was what I smelled as I made my way through the Frost house. The kitchen was empty, and next to it was a breakfast nook, which was similarly empty. But on the other side of it was a bathroom, and the light was turned on. Steeling myself, I peered inside.
I wish I hadn’t.
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