Sammy Keyes and the Hollywood Mummy (9 page)

Marissa says, “That's good enough, Sammy. Put it away!”

The pair of socks the brooch had come out of was sitting unrolled on top of the other balls of socks in the drawer. I picked one up, then gathered it down to the toe, thinking that I could pick the brooch up with the sock and not have to touch it again.

Then my thumbs felt something that does not belong in the toe of a sock.

Paper.

So I stopped, looked at Marissa, then pushed the toe end inside out. And onto the dresser fluttered a small scrap of folded paper.

Now, I don't know about fingerprints and paper. And maybe I was being paranoid, but something about the whole situation told me to pull the sleeves of my sweatshirt over my hands and
then
unfold the scrap. So that's what I did.

77CURIO was all that was written on it.

Marissa whispers, “What's that mean?”

“I don't know. It looks like a license plate number.”

I could hear Hali thumping the mattress around next door, and when she banged against the wall, it reminded me of what I'd heard the night before. I had
not
imagined it! No way. And wondering what that thumping had been about gave me the shivers. Clear up and down my spine.

I scooted the scrap next to the brooch on the dresser
top, then gathered the sock again and pinched them both inside the toe. Marissa whispered, “You sure you want to do this?”

“No, but I'm doing it anyway.” I tucked the socks inside each other, popped them into the dresser, and closed the drawer. “You-know-who told me to, and besides, I just want to get rid of the thing. It's giving me the creeps.”

“So what are we supposed to do now? Go back down there?”

“I guess. I sure don't want to stay in here.”

“Can we maybe go find something to eat?”

“Sure. Let's ask Hali.”

Marissa grabs my arm. “Let's not.”

Now, it's probably not very polite to go up to someone who's busy being mad at the world and ask her for food. It doesn't rank as high as fainting, but it's definitely somewhere in the top twenty. Especially when the person who's mad at the world is sweating away, rolling up bedding and throwing around furniture.

So we just stood in the doorway, watching as she flipped the chair upside down on the desk and then popped the wastepaper basket between the legs of the chair.

When she finally sees us, she says hello with a scowl, then picks a pair of my mother's shoes up off the floor and puts them next to the chair.

I take a step in and ask, “What are you doing?”

“Got orders to vacuum, too.” She eyes me with a smirk. “You here to help?”

I hesitate, then step all the way in. “Sure.”

She stops what she's doing, stares at me for a few seconds, then throws her head back and laughs. Not an oh-you're-so-funny laugh, a hysterical laugh. Like she's on the verge of completely losing it.

Very quietly I say, “I'm serious, Hali. We'll help.” I look over my shoulder. “Won't we, Marissa?”

Marissa says, “Uh…sure,” and steps around a bundle of bedding to join us.

Hali stares at me, then at Marissa, then back at me. “It's Sammy, right?”

“That's right.”

She sighs and says, “God, I'm sorry I've been such a witch. I'm just freaked out about something, and I'm finding it hard to deal.”

“Well, it's pretty easy to see you're mad about something.”

She shakes her head. “I'd like to hang 'em both.”

I took a stab. “Inga and Max?”

She snorts and says, “Yeah, her too.”

Marissa whispers, “What's up with those bandages she wears, anyway?”

Hali takes a rag out of her apron and starts wiping down the dresser. “You go in to get beautiful, you come out looking like a monster.”

“What?”

“Her plastic surgery was a disaster. They did some sort of skin peel, but she had a weird reaction to it, so now they're planing off the scars and grafting skin and trying to fix her up with some sort of intense skin rejuvenation program. I haven't actually seen it, but Tammy did, and I know it really freaked her out.”

Now, while Hali's explaining about Inga's cosmetic fiasco, she's buffing the dresser with a dust rag. And while she's talking, little snapshots of the morning start flipping through my brain—LeBrandi, dead in bed; the vial of pills on the dresser behind her; people passing the vial around; Tammy slamming it back on the dresser. And these snapshots keep bringing me back to the dresser.

The dresser.

Slowly a chill comes over me and holds on tight. And all of a sudden it feels like I'm trapped in a walk-in freezer— I'm cold, I'm panicky, and I know I can't get out without crying for help.

“Hali,” I say, but it's no cry at all. It's barely a whisper. “Hali!”

“What?” She stops mid-swipe. “Don't you go fainting on me, girl. What's wrong?”

I sit down on the edge of the mattress and ask, “Was there a glass in here?”

“What?”

“When you were cleaning up—did you find a glass?”

“No.”

I turn to Marissa. “Did you see one this morning?”

Marissa shakes her head.

“Is there a cup, a bottle,
anything
in the trash can?” Hali checks. “Two Kleenex and a pantyhose wrapper. What are you getting at?”

“What happened to the vial?”

“What vial? Oh, her sleeping pills? I don't know. Maybe the paramedics took it.”

I sat there a minute, trying not to shiver, but the more
I thought about it, the more I knew that there was too much wrong here for me not to be right.

Hali puts her hands on her hips and says, “What is up with you, girl?”

I look at her and whisper, “She didn't have water.”

“What?”

“Water. How could she have swallowed all those pills without any water?”

The moment it was out of my mouth, I wished I could take it back. I mean, who was I to say LeBrandi didn't swallow a fistful of pills without water? Maybe she had super-slick saliva that slid those suckers straight to her stomach. Maybe she just opened her throat and shook 'em down whole. Or maybe she'd gotten up, put all the pills in her hand, walked clear down to the bathroom, and downed them a few at a time while she gulped water under the faucet.

Right.

And what about the banging? I mean, you don't usually bang like that against a wall if you're drugged up with sleeping pills. You don't do that if you're dying of natural causes, either. Well, unless maybe you're choking, but I hadn't noticed any boxes of bonbons or half-eaten sandwiches waiting to be bagged and tagged as evidence.

No, you bang against a wall like that in a struggle. In a fight.

In a murder.

And if she
was
murdered, well, who in the world had wanted her dead?

The obvious choice sizzled like a branding iron against
my brain. I jerked back and tried to run from the idea. It had to be someone else! It had to be. I raced through some other possibilities, starting with Max. LeBrandi had Max's brooch in her sock drawer and… and that was an obvious dead end. Max didn't even know that the Honeymoon Jewels were missing until a little while ago.

Okay. Hali and Reena. Yeah! They'd been really upset with LeBrandi. But in my heart I knew—this was stretching things way too far. I mean, you don't kill someone over calling you
or
your mother a Jamaican Jailer.

Then it flashed through my mind that really, it could be anyone. Anyone at all! Someone could have come in through the window—no, there was no window. Okay, the door. I got up and checked the doorknob and then the jamb. No splintered wood, no stressed or pried-up metal. Whoever had come in had just walked in.

As I factored in the security system, the possibilities were coming down fast. Twelve women, plus Inga and Max, and Hali and Reena. And even though I didn't know anything about most of them, I did know a lot about
one
of them. Someone who was desperate enough and determined enough to do something as drastic as murdering LeBrandi.

My mother.

It was a horrible, panicky thought, but it rang so completely true. Getting the part of Jewel meant everything to my mother. It would mean she was a “real” actress, and it would mean getting away from Max—from the whole prospect of marrying Max
and
from the danger of being found out. For my mother to admit now that she was
Lana Keyes, truck-stop waitress from Santa Martina, would kill her. Absolutely kill her.

She'd also been gone—mysteriously gone—at the exact same time I'd heard the thumping from LeBrandi's room. And when I'd mentioned the thumping, my mother had wanted me to believe that I'd imagined it.

And what a quick and easy diversion the vial was! All she had to do was throw the pills out.

Or flush them down the toilet.

And even though she'd been very upset—even though she'd looked shocked and pale and frightened by LeBrandi, dead in her bed—I was starting to get the picture that my mother
was
an actress.

A very
good
actress.

I stood there panting for air, not knowing what to do. It was a perfect setup. My mother's fingerprints, her strands of hair, fibers from her clothes—any evidence that might be used against her
couldn't
be used against her. They were all things that you'd expect to find there. It was
her
room.

And her alibi would be airtight, except for one pesky little thing.

Me.

Hali pulled me out of my train wreck of emotions. “What are you doing over there?”

I came away from the door. “N-nothing.”

“Well, what were you saying?”

I shook my head. “Never mind. It was stupid.”

But Marissa's caught on. “Wow,” she says, but then adds, “Well… she could've gone down to the bathroom.
Sleeping pills don't kill you right away, do they? There'd be time.”

I try to sound confident as I say, “Yeah. I'm sure you're right,” but in my heart there's a cloud the size of Kansas moving in, and it feels heavy and dark.

And evil.

And for the first time in my life, that little part of my brain that helps me figure out what to do is quiet. Completely quiet. It's not knocking or nagging, not shaking or flagging. It's like a mute in there, arms crossed, eyes closed.

I wished with all my heart that I knew there was no way my mother would have killed LeBrandi. But I
didn't
know that. She'd made a new identity, complete with fake ID, phony newspaper clippings, and concocted acting credits. She'd spun herself into this person I barely knew and sure wouldn't trust.

Hali puts her fists on her hips and says, “Are you suggesting…,” then shakes her braids and mocks me with, “… foul play?”

I kind of toe the carpet with my high-tops and mumble, “Well, are they gonna … you know, check into it or something?”

“Why should they? Pills on the dresser, girl in the bed….” She rolls her eyes. “And I don't see any blood around here, do you?”

I shake my head, but what I'm thinking is, Just the way Lady Lana likes it.

“So you wanted to help? Here,” Hali says, then heaves me the giant wad of bedding off my mother's mattress. She points to the other two bundles and says to Marissa,
“You get one and I'll get the other. The chute's past the stairwell at the end of the hall. In a cubby on the left.”

I followed them like a zombie down to the end of the hall. And just before we turn left, Marissa points to some double doors straight ahead and says, “What's in there?”

“His Majesty's suite. He lets me in once a week so I can clean.” Hali sneers. “The prince.”

“Lets you in?” Marissa nods at the security panel. “He's got a different code?”

“What, are you kidding? He's Max.”

The laundry chute's just a big wooden cabinet door that swings down instead of to the side. Hali pulled it open, crammed her bundle in, and away it whooshed. Marissa did the same, and when hers had disappeared she giggled and said, “Cool! Where's that go?”

“Down to the laundry room, right by the kitchen.”

“But it doesn't just plop. You can hear it slide!”

Hali gives her a weak smile. “Work here a week. The thrill will be gone.” She holds the chute open for me. “Well? That your new security blanket or what?”

I pried my arms open and dumped my bundle, and as it whooshed happily down to the laundry room, that big cloud in my heart got two shades darker.

Marissa asks Hali, “Is there, you know, any possibility of maybe getting something to eat around here?”

Hali nods her head in my direction. “You think that's what her problem is?”

Marissa shrugs. “Could be.”

“A little cup of cocoa wouldn't cut it for me, either. Come on.”

She leads us downstairs, through Little Egypt, past the dining hall, and into the kitchen, where Reena's working away at a large stainless-steel sink, rinsing plates with an overhead sprayer. When she sees Hali, she shuts off the water and tries to talk to her, but Hali just steams right past and says to us, “Let's get the wash going first, okay?”

She pushes through a white metal door, and we follow her into the laundry room, where our wads of bedding are poking out beneath the laundry chute's swinging door. Hali says, “Separate those, would you? Sheets and cases, blankets, and spreads.”