Jaine Austen Mystery: Killing Cupid Part 33

Racing outside, I groaned to see the giant truck pulling up right outside my duplex.

I got there just as the automated arm of the truck was hoisting up my black garbage can.

"Stop!" I shrieked to the driver. "Let my garbage go!"

The garbage man, a wiry guy with a toothpick dangling from his mouth, looked down at me from the height of his cab.

"Say what?"

"Please put down my trash can. There may be a diamond collar in there."

"A diamond collar?" he asked, shifting the toothpick to the other side of his mouth.

"Yes. From Tiffany's. My cat threw it away by mistake."

"Your cat threw away your diamond collar?"

"Actually, it's hers, not mine."

"You bought your cat a diamond collar? From Tiffany's?" He shook his head in disgust. "Only in Beverly Hills."

"No, no, it was a gift from an infuriating old codger who made me have a picnic lunch with his dead mother and got into a fight with a blind jazz pianist and offered me twenty-five thousand dollars for Prozac. My cat was mad at me for not letting her keep the collar, and at first I thought she'd forgiven me, but no way, she's not the forgiving kind. Why, she once sulked for three straight weeks after I tried to give her a bath, something I'll never try again, that's for sure. Anyhow, she found the collar where I hid it in the closet and then she hid it somewhere else, and I've searched everywhere in the apartment even behind P. G. Wodehouse but it wasn't there, so I'm guessing she stashed it in the trash because that's where she always goes digging for snacks."

As I may have mentioned, I tend to babble under stress.

The garbage man just sat there chewing on his toothpick.

Finally, he said: "The guy offered you twenty-five grand for some Prozac? Hasn't he ever heard of generics?"

"Look, it's all very confusing. Can't I please just have my garbage back?"

"All right, lady."

And much to my eternal relief, he released the can to the ground. "Just one more thing," he called out as he drove off down the street. "You might want to try some of your friend's Prozac. Sure looks like you could use some."

Alone with my garbage, I wasted no time diving in.

Soon I was elbow deep in old pizza crusts and banana peels-not to mention Skip's appalling soy-carob pie. I continued burrowing my way through all sorts of glop until at last, plunging my arm into a ma.s.s of sodden moo shu pork, I felt something hard.

With a small prayer to the jewelry G.o.ds, I pulled it up.

Hallelujah! It was the diamond collar, shards of moo shu pork clinging to its clasp.

Clutching it to my heart, I started up the path to my apartment.

Just as I was pa.s.sing Lance's place, he came bounding out his front door, looking springtime fresh in chinos and a gingham checked shirt, a pullover tied around his shoulders, very Ralph Lauren in the Hamptons.

"Jaine, sweetie," he tsked, plucking a pizza crust from my shoulder. "You've really got to stop these between meal snacks. And a little deodorant wouldn't hurt either," he added, taking a whiff of my eau de garbage.

"I was just rooting around in the garbage for a diamond collar," I explained.

"That's nice, hon," he said, lost, as he often is, in Lance World. "So how do I look? Marvelous, I know. You'll never guess where I'm going. Donny's taking me for a drive up to Santa Barbara in his new Porsche! Isn't that exciting? Oh! There he is now!"

And indeed, parked at the curb right beyond my garbage can was a shiny silver Porsche convertible, with a James Deanish hottie behind the wheel.

"Ciao, sweetie!" Lance cried with a jaunty wave.

As he scurried down the path, his blond curls bobbing in the breeze, I returned to my apartment, where the mood was distinctly less sunny.

"Prozac!" I growled, waking her from one of her gazillion daily naps. "Do you realize what h.e.l.l you just put me through?"

She yawned mightily as I waved the moo shucrusted collar in her face.

"What have you got to say for yourself, young lady?"

She looked up at me with wide green eyes.

Can I have some of that pork?

Chapter 29.

"Jaine, my dear. What took you so long?"

Skip stood at the front door of his Casa de One Percenters, a palatial hacienda in the hills of Malibu.

"I got held up with a few things," I said, sparing him the details of my garbage dive.

It had taken me a good half hour to scrub myself-and the collar-clean in the shower. Another half hour to get dressed and lure Prozac into her cat carrier. And yet another forty minutes of non-stop wailing (from me-at the traffic) before finally making it over to Skip's place.

Now he ushered me into a vestibule the size of my living room. The first thing I saw, hanging in a nook above an occasional table, was a framed oil painting of a cat who bore a remarkable resemblance to Prozac.

Miss Marple, I presumed.

Skip was kneeling on the floor, entranced with her doppelganger.

"How's my darling Prozac?" he cooed, eagerly unlatching the door to her carrier and gathering her in his arms. "Do you remember me, sweetums?"

Prozac took a disdainful sniff.

Oh, h.e.l.l. It's old Denture Breath.

"Won't you join me in the den, my dear?" Skip said to me, finally remembering I was alive. "I was just about to watch some home movies of Miss Marple."

I followed him down a hallway along priceless Persian rugs, past rooms furnished with museum-quality pieces and velvet drapes straight out of Gone With the Wind.

At last we arrived at his den, a wood-paneled affair with worn leather furniture and hunting prints on the walls. An old-fashioned projector had been set up on an end table facing a screen on the far wall.

"Do sit down," he said, gesturing to a leather sofa, permanently indented with ancestral tush marks. "I had my housekeeper set out some snacks."

There on a coffee table in front of the sofa was a platter of highly unappetizing munchies: celery sticks, radishes, eggplant puree, and some unidentifiable slimy white globs.

"Those are tofu b.a.l.l.s," Skip explained, following my gaze, "with carrot puree in the center."

Lordie, where's a barf bag when you need one?

"I made them myself," he grinned proudly. "You'll have to try one."

Not without a court order.

"And look what I've got for my precious Prozac!" He held up a bowl of succulent white morsels. "Chopped lobster tail!"

Prozac's eyes grew large with l.u.s.t.

Way to go, Denture Breath!

"Skip," I protested. "You promised you wouldn't feed her fancy food."

"I promised I wouldn't feed her caviar. You didn't say anything about lobster."

And before I could stop him, he had Prozac in his lap, hand-feeding her lobster tidbits.

Oh, h.e.l.l. I'd never get her back on cat food now.

"Have some alfalfa juice," he said, handing me a gla.s.s of murky green liquid.

"Yum," I said, taking a nauseating sip.

Then I reached into my purse for the Tiffany collar.

"Skip, I've been meaning to return this to you." I held it out to him, praying it didn't smell of moo shu pork. "I can't keep it."

"Oh, but you must. I insist. You'll make an old man very happy."

He gazed at me with earnest watery eyes.

Oh, what the heck. I'd keep it. Whatever he paid for it was probably chump change for him. And after all my dates from h.e.l.l with the guy, I deserved it.

"Thank you so much," I said, slipping it back in my purse.

I was sitting there, trying to decide what to do with the money I got when I sold it-New car? New TV? Membership in the Pie of the Month Club?-when a stout, middle-aged gal with a cast-iron perm popped her head in the door.

"I'm leaving now, Mr. Skip."

"All right, Yolanda."

"I've got your dinner warming in the oven. Cheese-free, gluten-free vegetarian lasagna."

No cheese? No meat? Gluten-free pasta? Talk about leeching all the fun from lasagna.

"See you tomorrow, Mr. Skip."

And off she went (lucky gal), her footsteps echoing down the corridor.

As soon as she'd gone, Skip turned to me and winked.

"Alone at last."

Oh, h.e.l.l. I had to stop this love train, p.r.o.nto, before it left the station.

"So anyhow, Skip," I said, in my most businesslike voice, "about Joy's murder-"

"Must we talk about that now? Can't we watch The Adventures of Miss Marple? I really wanted you to see it."

"Okay, sure," I sighed. The guy'd just given me a diamond collar. The least I could do was sit through some movies of his dead cat.

So for the next fifteen minutes I watched Miss Marple napping, scratching, and playing with a ball of yarn.

Eat your heart out, Steven Spielberg.

"Look," cried Skip excitedly, just as I was about to embark on a little nap of my own. "Here she is, using the toilet to make poo poo."

And indeed, there on the screen was Miss Marple, sitting on a toilet seat, doing her business.

"That's amazing!" I said.

Prozac looked up from her lobster bits and eyed the screen, unimpressed.

Yeah, but could she cough up a hair ball the size of a k.u.mquat?

We continued to watch Miss Marple in action-wearing a Santa hat, dressed in a kitty tutu, and sitting behind the wheel of Skip's Bentley. Somewhere in the middle of one of Miss Marple's antics, Prozac gobbled up the last of the lobster bits and started yowling for more.

"Is my precious princess still hungry?" Skip asked. "Let Daddy get you a refill."

"Please, Skip," I said as he started to get up. "She's had more than enough."

Prozac shot me a dirty look.

Mind your own beeswax!

"A little more won't hurt her," Skip said.

And before I could stop him, he'd turned off the projector and was out the door.