Long, Lean, and Lethal

  “You’re absolutely gorgeous, and you know it,” Jennifer assured her.

  “You’re a doll, but the truth is, I’m thirty-six and have nothing to show for it,” Serena murmured, still staring critically at her reflection. Then she suddenly jumped and spun around in the chair, laughing. “Oh, my God! Don’t ever let me sit in front of a mirror like that. I’m starting to remind myself of my ex-husband.”

  Jennifer had to laugh, despite the fact that her friend was dead serious. Serena had spent a year married to Andy Larkin. She had opted out of the marriage as gracefully as she could. She never said an ill word about him to anyone; she had even taken interviews with any magazine that had asked, and stated leisure-time conflicts as the reason for the breakup. “He’s mountains, I’m water!” she told them all. The truth, she had admitted to Jennifer, was that they could never make any appointment on time. Andy Larkin—definitely smooth, charming, and very good looking—was his own biggest fan. He could never tear himself away from the mirror. He obsessed over losing his hair, though he had a rich head of it. He spent hours in tanning beds, days at salons. It had been too much for Serena.

  “I promise,” Jennifer said, “I’ll knock you in the head anytime I see you go near a mirror.”

  “I think I’m beginning to age-obsess.”

  “You’re thirty-six. They won’t let you have Medicare yet.”

  “No, but …” Serena shrugged. “It’s just that I have my work … and some great friendships. But other than that … one marriage, a disaster ended in divorce.”

  “You do have a great career. You’re adored,” Jennifer told her, studying her. “Ah,” she said softly, “I see. You’re afraid that you’ve gained the world, and lost your soul.”

  Serena shrugged again, a light in her eyes. “Well, I’m not so sure that working in Valentine Valley is like gaining the world, but yes, it’s a good job.”

  “Hey, I was told this morning that we’re the hardest-working and the best—we learn our lines, and we get them right, all in one take.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Serena laughed. “I just… It’s the biological clock thing. I want a family.”

  “You’re only thirty-six. Women are having children later and later—”

  “Yes, but I’d really just like to have my children the old-fashioned way. Making love with a man with whom I’m in love. I’m hoping not to wind up on fertility pills, desperately planning the right day and the right hour, God knows, going for in-vitro or something that’s even less certain. Not that I think that people shouldn’t—people should follow any path they need to take for a dream—but I’d just like it all to be the usual way.”

  “Serena, you’re giving yourself a whole list of problems that probably don’t exist.”

  “Maybe not, and I hand it to women who do go through all kinds of pain and heartbreaking determination to have their children. It’s just that every year I get older now, I’m putting myself in for a greater possibility of problems.”

  “I don’t think you’re that old yet. And actually, I’m getting up there, too.”

  “Twenty-eight? Sweetie, you’re just a babe. Not even thirty yet.”

  “Serena, if you want a child so badly, lots of women are opting for single parenthood.”

  Serena smiled. “I don’t know what my problem is. I want the whole package. The guy, the love, the forever after, the works.”

  “Well, the guy must be out there somewhere. Go find him, take a few chances.”

  “The last time I took a chance,” Serena said woefully, “I married Andy.” She shuddered. “Oh, my God, could you imagine children with him? A little baby with a mirror attached to his bottle?”

  “I see your point on that one.”

  “Oh, well, I didn’t come to talk to you about my own midlife crisis.”

  “Midlife crisis!”

  “Life expectancy is in the seventies somewhere. I’ll be thirty-seven soon. Double it and you’ve got mid-seventies. But that’s not the point. You know that I can be really pushy and mean and brazen when I choose.”

  “Just like a cobra,” Jennifer lied politely.

  Serena made a face. “Well, I can handle the hairy monsters around this place, and you know it. If you want this party called off, tell me, and it will be done.”

  Jennifer hesitated. She hadn’t wanted the party; didn’t want it. But her mother had been the one who mentioned it. Because of Conar Markham. Abby was probably telling him right now to make her house his house, to bring in anyone he wanted, anyone at all.

  “No … ,” Jennifer said slowly. “I think it’s going to take place one way or the other. I’d like to feel that I have a little control over the situation.”

  Serena was watching her, as if she were about to warn her not to obsess over Conar Markham being her mother’s stepson. She seemed to reconsider.

  “All right. Do you need me to come over tonight?

  “No, I’m really fine, but if I weren’t, Doug has already invited himself for the weekend.”

  “Doug invited himself over?”

  “As my moral support. To be honest, I don’t need any moral support. But you know, Abby has always loved Doug, so I thought he’d be a good … unrelated-in-any-way type person to have around.”

  “Ah,” Serena murmured.

  Another tap sounded at Jennifer’s door. They both swung toward the door. “Surely, it’s Kelly,” Serena said.

  “Jen?” It was Kelly.

  Kelly Trent played Maria, the third sister in the great Valentine family of the California wine country. Like Serena, she had become a close friend of Jennifer’s. Somehow, on the show and off, the three women managed to complement one another very well. Each had a touch of red in her hair. Jennifer’s was the lightest, Serena’s the darkest, and Kelly’s was in between, almost a light auburn. Serena was the tallest; Jennifer was a half an inch shorter, and Kelly, playing the middle sister, was just an inch below Jennifer’s own five feet, eight inches. They had all been with the show since its inception four years ago—as had most of the cast, including the part-timers with recurring roles such as the waiters at the Valentines’ favorite restaurant, the fictional Prima Piatti.

  In the soap, the family was known to band against the outside world while bickering continually among one another. As friends, the three were one another’s constant support.

  Kelly came in with grave concern written in her wide hazel eyes. “Serena, you’re here, oh, good! Jen, are you doing all right?”

  The depth of Kelly’s concern caused Jennifer a twinge of guilt. Nothing terrible or traumatic had happened. The “Prodigal Son” was returning, that was all. The rich, famous, almost relative whose arrival was thrilling everyone else.

  “I’m fine. Except that I’m beginning to feel more and more like a fool—and a weakling.”

  “It’s certainly not as if you need to be afraid of him, or anything,” Kelly said. She moved comfortably into the room, perching on the dressing table near Serena’s seat in front of it.

  “It never occurred to me to be afraid of him, really,” Jennifer said. “In any way.”

  “Of course not. He’s not out to do any harm to you,” Kelly said.

  “And you do know him,” Serena said.

  “Not very well. We’ve crossed paths a few times through the years, but …”

  “To be honest,” Serena said, “I hate to admit it, but I’m dying to meet him.”

  “Well, there you have it,” Jennifer said, “it’s the simple truth. Everyone is dying to meet him.”

  “Well, I imagine that he’s already at your mother’s house,” Kelly said, powdering her nose, and meeting Jennifer’s eyes in the mirror. “There were huge write-ups about him in today’s paper. Did you read any of them?”

  “No,” Jennifer murmured.

  “You should. In self-defense, if nothing else,” Serena mused.

  “Self-defense?”

  “Face it, no matter what you say, you’ve been seething ever s
ince you heard that he was coming.”

  Jennifer was quiet for a moment. She really wanted so badly to meet this situation with nothing more than calm, casual maturity. But there was just something about him. From the first time she’d met him, he’d …

  Irritated her! That was it. He was straight from damned Central Casting, rugged, dignified, a frigging morph of Conan the Barbarian and James Bond. Every time she was in a room with him, her temper just burned.

  Even when his wife had died, she’d wanted to show some sympathy. But he’d suddenly blown it, lost his reserve, his cool aura of forced courtesy. He’d lashed out at her like a scorpion.

  “Like I said, I really don’t know him very well,” Jennifer murmured. “I’m seething like everyone else—he’s getting our pay raises.”

  “We’ve all been curious, dying to meet him—and seething on the inside. Have you heard what they’re paying him?” Kelly asked.

  “The rumor, of course,” Jennifer said.

  “Kell, whoever said this business was fair?” Serena queried in stern warning.

  “I wasn’t actually complaining,” Kelly said, casting another glance toward Jennifer. “Just commenting.”

  They both stared at her.

  “All right, all right. So I’m whining. But remember how happy Joe Penny was about his coming. Ecstatic. He said that we should all be dying to have him in the show. So even if I am whining, I really do like my job here, and the freedom we have with asking for breaks and all. And think about it, even if we resent his paycheck, Conar Markham is sure to be a tremendous addition to the cast. He’s so very popular … and dynamite. A really handsome, ruggedly good-looking, man’s-man-type man.”

  “But Jennifer still has a very valid reason to resent him,” Serena said softly, watching Jennifer.

  Jennifer laughed. “Well, I do. He’s staying at the house where I’m living with my mother. Who is ill. And he’s staying there because my mother invited him.”

  “That’s not really such a horrible thing,” Kelly said.

  Jennifer lifted her hands. “That’s true—it’s not. I’m mad at myself because I’m upset. It’s even a little bit ridiculous. I’m upset because I think my mother asked him here because …”

  “Because … ?” Kelly said.

  “Because what?” Serena asked.

  “Oh, my God,” Kelly breathed. “Oh, dear, you’re upset because you think that your mother has some kind of a thing for him, and that he has a thing for her—”

  “No! Oh, no!” Jennifer protested in horror. “Oh, God, no, nothing so horribly Oedipal. I’m upset for a number of reasons. It’s terrible to see my mother suffer, for one.”

  Serena watched her for a long moment before speaking very softly. “Then if Conar makes her happy, why does it bother you?”

  “Naturally, I want her to be happy,” Jennifer said.

  “Then …,” Kelly persisted.

  Jennifer found herself forced to grin. “I can’t help it. The fact that he makes her happy pisses me off.”

  Kelly grinned. Jennifer’s smile faded.

  “Seriously, this is what makes me more upset than anything else. I just think that my mother manipulated his arriving here because she’s worried about me—and I’m afraid that the medications are beginning to make her lose her mind.”

  Kelly and Serena looked at each other.

  Kelly carefully formed the next question. “Okay, why, exactly, do you think that she invited him here?”

  Jennifer hesitated for a minute. “Because she’s afraid for me. She thinks she’s gotten threats regarding me.”

  “But that’s crazy,” Kelly said.

  Jennifer didn’t have time to answer. The door suddenly swung open. Doug burst into the room without knocking.

  “Doug—” they began to protest in unison.

  “Have you heard?” he demanded.

  “Heard what?” Jennifer asked sharply.

  “Turn on the television. Evening news.” He didn’t wait for them to follow his command. He squeezed past them in the small space and turned on the television in the corner of the room.

  Puzzled, the three women shrugged to one another, and turned to watch the news.

  “Oh, my Lord,” Kelly breathed.

  A deep, masculine newscaster’s voice was coming over an eight-by-ten picture of a beautiful and well-known actress.

  Brenda Lopez.

  She had been found dead.

  Her nude body had been tossed into Laurel Canyon.

  She had been brutally murdered before she was thrown into the canyon—more than sixty stab wounds had crisscrossed her neck, chest, and abdomen.

  Nothing further could be divulged until the L.A. Medical Examiner’s office had completed the autopsy.

  The news continued. They all stared blankly at the television.

  Then they all turned and stared at Jennifer, and chills swept through her body.

  Her mother was going mad. It was the medicine. It had to be …

  But she was suddenly very afraid.

  Murder happened in L.A. There was absolutely no reason the death of Brenda Lopez should have anything to do with her mother’s wild fears for her.

  But still …

  She couldn’t help but feel a strange hot shivering inside.

  She didn’t want to be found like Brenda Lopez.

  Chapter 4

  DOUG FOLLOWED HER HOME since they both had a car, so thankfully, she didn’t have to keep a conversation going. And by the time she had driven to Granger House, she had the world—and her own mind—back to rational.

  L.A. County could be a fierce place. Once, when she’d gotten into some trouble with a group of fast-driving, drug-taking friends, she had been brought to see the county morgue. It had been enough to make everything else in life seem trivial for a very long time. So many traffic fatalities, drug overdoses, shootings, stabbings, deaths from domestic violence, the infamous and the not so well known, children beaten to death by their own parents—parents killed by their children, suicides, homicides, fratricides, bodies mangled beyond recognition due to automobile accidents. Any time she remembered that experience, she usually put her own life into grateful perspective. Today, she used it to calm her sudden and irrational fear. She had met Brenda Lopez a few times. She had been a talented and beautiful woman. She had wanted to make it big in the movie industry—not on stage, and not on television. She wanted feature films, and she wanted to be in the multi-million-dollar category for any deal she made. She was aggressive and determined—which she needed to be in Hollywood. Rumor had it that she was willing to make a few enemies along the way. Rumor, as she knew, could be false. But she knew Brenda, who had flatly told her that she was willing to do one hell of a lot—including stepping on a few toes—to get where she wanted to be.

  Was that why she had been murdered?

  Whatever the cause, it could surely have nothing to do with her mother’s strange fears for her. L.A. wasn’t just a place that had seen violence before, it was a big place, a very big place, and terrible things did happen.

  She pulled her car into the sweeping portico of old Granger House. It was a brick structure, set high on a cliff, which added to its reputation as a haunted house. When fog came in, it shrouded the base, and the house seemed to rise right out of the mist. Jennifer had always loved the house. The views from the third-floor tower were magnificent.

  Doug exited his little Mazda with a whistle. “It’s even better up close,” he told her.

  “It’s just a house,” she said.

  “Um. Just your run-of-the-mill ranch, sure.”

  “I didn’t mean that. It’s a beautiful house, a great house. But that’s all.”

  She started for the front door. It opened before she reached it. Edgar, in his perfect duck-tailed uniform, had known she’d arrived.

  “Good evening, Miss Jennifer.”

  She had tried to tell him time and time again that “Miss” was not really part of her first name.


  “Hello, Edgar. How is everything?”

  Everything meant her mother, and Edgar knew it.

  “Very well. Mr. Markham arrived safely—”

  “His flight was good and he survived the raptors at the airport, eh?” Doug asked, coming up behind Jennifer.

  “Well, hello, there, sir,” Edgar told Doug. “Yes, he evaded them very well. He’s in the den now, reading, before dinner. Your mother, Miss Jennifer, is quite well, but resting before dinner herself.”

  “Thank you, Edgar. Doug is going to stay the weekend. Have we a good place to put him?”

  “Something like a presidential suite?” Doug suggested.

  “I’d been thinking of the basement myself,” Jennifer murmured.

  Doug wrinkled his nose at her.

  “I think we have a pleasant guest room free upstairs,” Edgar said evenly. “Do come in. Why don’t you adjourn to the den for a cocktail? I’ll take Mr. Henson’s belongings to his room.”

  “Thank you, Edgar.”

  Edgar took Doug’s bag. “Shall we proceed to the den?” Doug asked softly at Jennifer’s ear.

  “Didn’t you want a tour?”

  “Later. I want to meet Boy Wonder.”

  “All right, fine. Actually, good. I can introduce you, then see to my mother.”

  “Ah, you mean you can introduce me to Mr. Markham—and run away.”

  “I certainly don’t need to run away. And I am concerned about my mother. This is a lot of excitement for her.”

  “Maybe you’re overprotective.”

  “Are you really suggesting that I’m overbearing?” she asked worriedly.

  “No,” Doug said seriously, taking her hands. “I know how concerned you are.”

  She kissed his cheek. “Thanks.”

  “Let’s go meet the dragon.”

  “This way.”

  She led him through the foyer and the grand hall. Both were handsomely decorated in carved wood cornices and designs. The light-colored walls were decorated with swords, coats of arms, and works of art. Much of the art was Abby’s; the design pieces had been set in the days of David Granger, a very rich English actor and amateur magician. Not long after building his magnificent mansion on the cliff, he had, like the great illusionist Harry Houdini, become more and more obsessed with the occult. His parties, arranged so that the living could contact the dead, were successful in a bizarre way—several of his guests met their own deaths while attending. Thus had Granger House achieved its reputation for being haunted. But it was a beautiful home, and after Granger’s death, his wife, and then his daughter, had remained in the house for many years before giving up the property to return to England. The house had happy memories as well as the grim ones, and Abby had never been daunted by a ghost story. The dead were the safest people she’d ever known, she’d sometimes told Jennifer.