“Get off my property, Jorge. Mind your own business,” Eddie shouted. “No
spics
allowed.”
Jorge jerked free of Nikki’s grip and lunged toward Eddie. Luckily, whoever Melinda had passed the gun to had carried it into the house.
“Whoa, easy there.”
Nikki saw a big, tanned hand shoot out and grab Jorge by the arm, stopping him short. She looked up gratefully to see Marshall, calmly reeling Jorge in. Though muscular, Jorge wasn’t a big man; Marshall towered over him.
“Come on, Jorge,” Marshall intoned. “Let’s go back to the house.”
Hector grabbed Jorge’s other arm.
Nikki met Melinda’s gaze across the driveway. Melinda had her twitchy son by the arm, trying to tug him in the opposite direction. Nikki gave her a quick smile of understanding—maybe a little pity—and turned away, following Marshall, who had released Jorge, but was only two feet behind him.
“He’s
loco
,” Victoria whispered to Nikki, her Spanish accent pretty darned good. She fell into step beside her daughter. “I don’t know why Melinda didn’t drown him at birth.”
“Mother!” Nikki cut her eyes at her.
“I’m just saying he was always a worthless punk,” Victoria said under her breath. “Even when he was a child.”
Marshall gave Jorge a gentle push through the gate and Hector followed his brother-in-law. Marshall waited on the Bernard side of the fence for Nikki and Victoria.
“Miss Bordeaux? I don’t want to bother you, but . . .”
Nikki and Victoria both stopped and turned to see a young man in shorts and bare feet. He had a golden tan and a serious gym membership. He was holding out a black Sharpie marker.
“I can’t believe it’s you,” he babbled. “I’ve seen all your movies like a million times.
Sister, Sister
makes me cry every time.” He offered her the Sharpie. “Would you mind?”
Victoria hesitated, then smiled that gorgeous smile of hers and accepted the marker. “What would you like me to sign, dear?”
“My name’s Astro, Astro Wharton.”
Nikki raised her eyebrows, and then raised them even farther when he stepped toward Victoria and pulled his ripped muscle shirt to the side, flexing his massive pec.
“My left side; it’s my best.”
Victoria arched a brow, popping the cap off the marker. Mouth pursed, she signed her name with great flourish across his bare skin. Left pec.
The smile.
Astro Wharton looked down at her signature as he accepted the marker back. “Oh my God, my friends at the gym aren’t going to believe this. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” She flashed
the smile
one last time and walked away.
Nikki stood staring at the eye candy for a second. Had this guy really just asked a seventy-year-old woman to autograph his
pec?
“Nicolette?” Victoria sang, curling a finger to beckon her.
Nikki flashed her best imitation of the smile her mother had made her practice in the mirror as a teenager. This smile was required in any public situation. “Have a good day.”
With Nikki, Victoria, Jorge, and Hector safely on the other side of the fence, Marshall swung the gate shut. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Jorge?” Marshall demanded. “You’re lucky he didn’t blow your brains out. You know better than to mess with Crazy Eddie.”
Jorge threw back his shoulders. “He’s lucky I didn’t—”
“Gentlemen, gentlemen.” Nikki stepped between the two, afraid Jorge was going to get into it with Marshall next.
They’d attended the same elementary school, Nikki and Jorge; Victoria had thought it important that her daughter see how
regular folks
lived. Even in those days, Jorge had been a hothead, getting into fights, defending honor and pride. Nikki had ended up having to stick up for Jorge against teachers and the principal. In middle school, Nikki had joined the ranks of the privileged children and gone to private school and Jorge had been left to fight his own battles.
“I think I’m going to finish my cocktail.” Victoria halted in front of Jorge. “Are you all right?” she asked in a motherly tone Nikki didn’t hear often. “Not hurt, are you?”
Jorge shook his head, and lowered his gaze. He’d always been in awe of Victoria, maybe a little scared of her. Which was smart. She certainly scared the bejeezus out of Nikki.
“Good.” Victoria gave a regal nod, back in movie goddess mode. “Join me, Marshall?”
“By all means.” Marshall offered his arm and the two strolled across the side lawn toward the back.
Nikki heard her dogs barking and saw them appear in the yard, then take off after Victoria and Marshall. Nikki turned her attention to Jorge. “What happened? How did you end up in Eddie’s yard?”
“I was trimming,” Jorge explained, motioning to the azaleas. “I heard Ree’s voice. Like she was in trouble.”
“And she’s your cousin?”
He nodded. “My uncle’s daughter, Maria Gaza,” he said stiffly. “We never had much to do with them. Mom thought they were . . . low class. They haven’t been in the States long.”
Nikki nodded. She felt guilty that she knew so little of Jorge’s life now. They had never had a disagreement; they had just sort of drifted apart. “So you heard your cousin,” she encouraged.
“I told him to stay out of it,” Hector put in. “Ree can take care of herself.”
Jorge glanced at his brother-in-law and then continued. “I saw them through the fence. She and Eddie were arguing.” He shrugged. “He hit her, so I went out the gate.”
“And onto the Bernard property.”
“Gates were open. He can’t hit Ree,” Jorge insisted. “He can’t hit women.”
Nikki glanced away, her gaze settling on the still-flowering azaleas. He’d been trimming off the old blooms. “You have to stay out of this, Jorge. As Hector said, let Ree handle it. She should call the police.”
“Call the police? Really, Nikki?” He laughed, but without humor. “
She’s not legal
.”
Nikki looked at him again. “Then she needs to stay away from him.”
“Or I could just kill him,” Jorge said.
“I’d do it for you,
hermano
,” Hector put in quietly. “You know I would.”
Nikki frowned, looking from one man to the other. “You’re not killing anyone. Either of you. It’s a Friday night. Both of you go home, take a shower. Hector, play with your kids. Have dinner with your wife. Jorge, go out on a date. Have a beer with your friends.” She gave Jorge a gentle push on the arm. He had dark, expressive eyes. Ina’s eyes. “Have some fun, Jorge. You never look like you’re having any fun.”
He met her gaze and his features softened. “Haven’t seen you in awhile. You look good, Nikki. I like your hair longer, like this.” He motioned to her hair, which fell past her shoulders. “It’s pretty.”
Feeling weirdly embarrassed by his compliment, more so because he said it in front of Hector, she took a step back. She tucked a lock of strawberry blond hair behind her ear.
“I hope Jeremy realizes how lucky he is to have you,” Jorge said, his tone slightly teasing. Jeremy had grown up down the street; the three of them had been pals when they were kids.
She smiled. “Go home, guys. Workday’s over.”
Nikki walked away. In the days to come, she’d wish she hadn’t.
Chapter 3
N
o one expects to wake up to a bloodcurdling scream. Certainly not in Beverly Hills. Nikki sat straight up in her bed, her legs tangled up in Sferra Italian bed linens, disoriented. The dogs leapt down, barking wildly, and ran for the closed door.
Nikki blinked, trying to chase the cobwebs from her mind. Had she been dreaming?
No, that was definitely a scream. The second one left no doubt in her mind of the existence of the first. It took only another second to figure out that it was her mother’s housekeeper, Ina, screaming.
Nikki flew across the room and slipped out the door, pulling it closed behind her. Whatever was going on downstairs, Ina didn’t need two nosy Cavies in the middle of it. Behind the closed door, her dogs continued to bark. Still in her preferred PJs—a t-shirt and sweats—she ran barefoot down the upstairs hall toward the open, winding staircase to the foyer.
Victoria’s door banged open and she emerged, tying a pink silk sash around her robe. She looked up at Nikki, her still-gorgeous face devoid of makeup and the goddess persona. She wore a white silk turban over her platinum hair, and even though half asleep, she appeared much younger than her true age. “What is wrong with Ina?”
“I don’t know.” Nikki ran past her. “You should wait here.”
“Ina!” Victoria called in an authoritative voice, hurrying after Nikki. “We’re coming.”
“What’s wrong?” Amondo ran down the stairs behind Nikki and Victoria. He too was tying on his robe.
Had Nikki had the time to think about it, she would have wondered where Amondo had come from. Her mother’s bedroom? He had been Victoria’s assistant, her bodyguard, her chauffeur, for more than thirty years. She received him in her suite all the time; her pink boudoir was her command center. But this early?
Ina screamed again from the back of the house. She was talking half in English, half in Spanish. Nikki rushed into the kitchen to find the housekeeper fumbling with the cordless phone.
“Ina! What’s wrong?”
“The . . . ga . . . garbage!” Ina was hyperventilating. She was a tall, thin, regal woman with golden-brown skin and the same expressive eyes as her son, Jorge. But right now she looked as if she had seen a ghost.
“
Nueve, uno, uno
.” She tried to punch the numbers into the phone, made an error, punched the OFF button, and tried again.
“Ina, I’ll call for you.” Nikki gently took the phone from her, but didn’t dial. “What’s going on? What’s happened?”
“Calm down, Ina.” Victoria took her housekeeper’s hand and rubbed it between hers, peering up into her face.
“What’s happened?” Amondo, not usually excitable, was still fumbling to get his robe closed.
“
Muerto
.”
“Who’s dead?” Nikki murmured.
“
Lo han puesto en la basura!
”
“Slowly,” Victoria insisted, lifting up on her tiptoes to look eye to eye with Ina. “
En Inglés, por favor.
You know my Spanish is atrocious.”
Ina pressed her free hand to her chest. “In the garbage. They . . . they put him . . . out in the trash!”
“
Who
is in the trash?” Nikki asked, still not following.
All Ina could do was point to the back door, left standing open.
“The garbage? In the back?”
“I . . . I was . . . carrying out . . . the trash,” Ina managed. Her English was perfect. It was just that after all these years, she probably still thought in her native language. “I took . . . the trash . . . to . . . to the receptacle in the alley. And there he was. Dead.” She pulled her hand from Victoria’s, clutching her head and rocking back and forth. “My
hijo
! My poor
hijo!
”
Her
hijo? Jorge?
Suddenly, Nikki couldn’t breathe. She dropped the phone on the counter and raced out the open back door. Her heart was pounding.
Please, please no
, she prayed silently. She ran down the sidewalk that led to the back gate to the alley behind Victoria’s house, and ran past Ina’s little Honda. Ahead, the small back service gate was still open.
Ina, Victoria, and Amondo hurried after her.
“Amondo, take her back!” Nikki called over her shoulder. “Take them both back.”
“
You
stay with them. Let me go,” Amondo insisted. He, too, was spry for his age; he had to be somewhere in his sixties.
Amondo and Victoria both wore slippers. His were blue corduroy. Hers were pink silk mules, which didn’t seem to slow her down.
Nikki burst through the open gate into the alley, where there was a long row of multicolored garbage receptacles and recycling bins against the fence. The alley ran the entire length of the 1000 block of Roxbury Drive.
Nikki stopped short in front of the bins. For a moment, she thought she might be sick. But only a moment. Unfortunately, this was the third time she had come in direct contact with a dead body. It wasn’t Jorge, though.
“Amondo, please,” she said, sounding amazingly calm. She couldn’t take her eyes off the blue receptacle directly in front of her. “Go back to the house and call nine-one-one. Give them our address, but tell them they need to come to the rear alley.”
Amondo tried to block Victoria’s view of the body, but she was not a woman to be kept from anything.
“Oh, heavens,” Victoria sighed, sounding more sad than horrified. The body was posed like a wax figure, eyes open wide. “I was afraid something like this was going to happen.” She gestured toward the body, propped up against the trash barrel. “Didn’t I tell you, Amondo, that it was only a matter of time before this happened?”
Ina cried quietly, her hands covering her mouth.
A pair of pruning shears protruded from Eddie’s chest.
From where Nikki was standing, she could clearly read the name etched on the wooden handle.
J. Delgado.
They were Jorge’s pruning shears. The same shears she had seen him using on Victoria’s azaleas the previous night, just before his argument with Eddie. The argument where he threatened to kill Eddie.
“
Dios a mio
,” Ina mumbled. She and Amondo crossed themselves simultaneously.
The shock of the moment passed. Nikki turned to the others. “Everyone, go back to the house. Amondo, call nine-one-one. I’ll stay here.” She swallowed hard. “With the body.”
“Nicolette.”
Nikki met her mother’s gaze, Bordeaux blues to Bordeaux blues. Nikki knew what Victoria was thinking. This was Nikki’s third dead body, but it was the second time she and her mother had been together in the presence of one. A tumble of memories filled Nikki’s eyes with tears.
“Nicolette, I’ll stay. You go back to the house.” In a rare demonstration of affection, Victoria rested her hand on Nikki’s forearm. Her eyes were dry. The woman was honed of steel and, at this moment, Nikki realized how thankful she was for that. Victoria’s strength gave
her
strength. It had always been that way between them.
“No,” Nikki said. “You’re not dressed. I’m sure the police will want to speak with you. You need to be ready.”
Amondo had his arm around Ina. Her chest was heaving with each sob and she laid her head on his shoulder. He offered his free hand to Victoria.
Victoria lifted her chin a notch, refusing his assistance. “I suppose there’s no rush, at this point, but the call has to be made. It’s my garbage can. I’ll make the call.” She brushed past Amondo and Ina, her pink silk gown fluttering in the morning breeze like a queen’s robe. As she made her dramatic exit from the alley, she glanced over her shoulder. “I’ll send Amondo back with a pair of shoes for you, Nicolette.”
And then Nikki was alone. Sort of.
Her gaze settled on Eddie again. It was truly a horrific scene. His pudgy body was propped up, elbows back as if he were casually leaning on one of the rolling blue garbage bins. His bare feet were crossed, his vacant eyes wide, his skin tone ashy. He was wearing the same pair of pink hibiscus-flowered swim shorts and red Ralph Lauren polo that he’d been wearing the evening before. The shirt looked stained beneath the trademark polo horse appliqué, around the blades of the pruning shears, but Nikki didn’t want to get close enough to see if it was blood.
Did it matter?
Jorge’s name was practically flashing at her in neon lights.
But surely Jorge couldn’t have done this. He wouldn’t.
Nikki looked up and down the alley. It was only eight a.m. None of the neighbors were up and about on a Saturday morning. The only movement she saw was the flutter of several Burger King hamburger wrappers caught around a spike in the wrought-iron fence. She wondered which of Victoria Bordeaux’s ritzy neighbors was a closet Burger King addict.
She glanced at Eddie again.
He was looking at her. Sort of.
She took a step closer. Should she close his eyes? They did that on TV. But that would be tampering with a dead body at the scene of a homicide. Probably not a good idea.
She exhaled, feeling shaky. By now her mother would have made the emergency phone call. She’d soon hear sirens.
She waited.
Eddie seemed to be waiting, too.
She caught a whiff of blooming roses and sour milk on the cool morning breeze. Someone had had fish for dinner the night before. She took a step back from the garbage bins, now acutely aware that she was barefoot and that she may have spilled raspberry sorbet on her t-shirt last night.
She scratched at the spot over her breasts; she was braless, but she doubted anyone would notice. Victoria had been referred to as
stacked
once upon a time; she had been the decisive sweater girl of the silver screen. Nikki had inherited her father’s mammaries, apparently.
She glanced at Eddie again. She really wanted to close his eyes. She wanted to pull the shears out of his chest and . . . dump them elsewhere. The Pacific Ocean came to mind.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly under her breath. She made herself look into Eddie’s eyes. Victoria had always insisted that was important, no matter who you were addressing—Robert De Niro or the girl who worked the grill at the studio commissary. “I’m really sorry this happened to you, Eddie. Even if I didn’t like you,” she added, not wanting to seem two-faced. Eddie had always known she didn’t like him. She just didn’t want him to think—
Realizing how crazy her thoughts were, she walked to the other side of the alley, crossing her arms over her chest. (If she kept them like this, maybe the police wouldn’t see the sorbet.) She looked in both directions of the alley again, wondering from which way the cops would approach. The Beverly Hills Police Department was on Rexford, but—
Nikki heard the wail of a police car, then a second, and she shivered. She glanced at the bloody shears. Ina had good reason to cry. The police would waste no time in arresting a first-generation American gardener from Mexico if he was a suspect in the killing of famous producer Abraham Bernard’s only son.
The question was, what was Nikki going to do about it?