Death by Tiara (7 page)

“Lovely to meet you,” the willow grinned, revealing a mouthful of impossibly white teeth.

“Scott and Chloe used to be engaged.”

This newsflash delivered by Ma Willis, who came sailing into the room with a mischievous gleam in her eye.

“But that’s all over now!” Scott hastened to assure me, shooting his mother a dirty look as he hurried to my side.

Impervious to his glare, Ma Willis smiled brightly and said, “Let’s all head in for dinner, shall we?”

Then she turned to her husband, who still sat rapt in front of The Weather Channel. “Brighton!” she shouted. “Time for dinner! Turn off the damn TV!”

Stirring from his stupor, Scott’s dad clicked off the TV, then pressed another remote. And before my astonished eyes, a painting that looked like an original Renoir came sliding down from the wall to cover the TV screen.

So this was how the one percent lived.

We trooped across the hall to a dining table set with an exquisite Battenberg lace tablecloth and enough crystal to stock a branch of Bloomingdale’s.

Pa Willis took a seat at the head of the table while Scott and I sat down next to each other, across from Chloe, who sat by herself at the other side of the table. My fanny had no sooner hit the chair than Ma Willis hoisted me up by the elbow.

“Oh, no, Jaine!” she cried. “You can’t possibly sit here. You must switch seats with Chloe, so you can have an ocean view.”

And before I knew it, Chloe had whipped across the room to sit thigh by thigh with Scott and I was all by my lonesome at the other side of the table.

“But, Mom,” Scott protested. “It’s dark out. Jaine can’t see the ocean.”

“Maybe not,” Ma Willis conceded. “But she can see the moon and the stars and our new patio furniture.”

Scott shot his mom another dirty look, which she proceeded to blithely ignore.

“Want some wine, Jan?” Scott’s father asked, holding out a bottle of cabernet.

I nodded eagerly. Something told me I was going to need a wee bit o’ alcohol to make it through this dinner.

Pa Willis poured me a generous slug, and passed the bottle around to the others.

“So, Jaine,” Ma Willis asked with an icy stare, “what is it that you do?”

“I’m an advertising copywriter.”

“She wrote
In a Rush to Flush? Call Toiletmasters!
” Scott beamed proudly.

“Is that so?” Ma Willis replied, as if she’d just seen a rat prancing across her Battenberg lace tablecloth.

“How wonderfully kitschy,” Chloe said, practically blinding me with her perfect smile. “Who are some of your other clients?”

I started reeling them off, eager to make a good impression.

“Oh, I’ve got Mattress King Mattresses, Ackerman’s Awnings—”

“Where
Everything’s Just a Shade Better!”
Scott piped up. “Jaine wrote that!”

“And there’s Fiedler on the Roof Roofers,” I continued. “And Tip Top Dry Cleaners.”

“We clean for you. We press for you. We even dye for you!”
Scott chimed in.

“Really?” Pa Willis said, suddenly jumping into the conversation. “Can you get this stain out of my tie?” He flapped his tie in my face. “I got pâté on it.”

“Jaine
writes
for a dry cleaner’s, Dad. She doesn’t work there.”

“Oh,” Pa Willis said, disappointed.

“Jaine’s really very talented,” Scott insisted, my one-man cheering squad.

But Ma Willis was not impressed.

“Chloe used to model for Tommy Hilfiger,” she pointed out with pride.

“Oh, Patrice,” Chloe blushed. “That was ages ago.”

“Now she’s a marine biologist.”

I smiled weakly.

“Okay, I give up. Chloe wins.”

No, I didn’t really say that. I just took a slug of wine and said, “How interesting.”

A few painfully awkward moments passed, during which Pa Willis scratched at the pâté stain on his tie, Scott fidgeted with his fork, and Chloe smiled sweetly at Ma Willis.

At last, Rosita came hurrying in from the kitchen and started passing out bowls of soup.

Oh, foo. It was plain old consommé. Not a thing in it. Chicken noodle soup without the chicken and the noodles and the flavor.

Everyone slurped at it in silence.

I was dying to reach for the basket of rolls Rosita had set down on the table, but no one else was eating them, so I refrained.

Desperate to make conversation, I said to Ma Willis, “You have such a lovely home.”

“It is, isn’t it?” she replied. “Too bad we don’t get to stay here more often. We spend most of our time at our country house in the Cotswolds.”

“The Cotswolds?”

“It’s in England, dear.”

I knew that.

“We’re avid horse people,” Ma Willis explained. “We love to ride.”

“Horses,” Chloe added, clearly having pegged me as mentally deficient.

“I don’t suppose you ride, do you, Jaine?” she asked, with a smug smile. “You don’t seem the type.”

I’d have given anything to wipe that smile off her face.

And out of nowhere I suddenly heard myself saying, “As a matter of fact I do.”

“Really?” Scott asked, eyebrows raised in surprise.

Oh, what the hell. It was a long way from the Cotswolds. They’d never know the truth.

“Yes, I’ve been riding ever since I was knee high to a saddle.”

With that, I threw caution to the winds and reached over to grab a dinner roll.

And that’s when tragedy struck.

I watched in horror as my flowy kimono sleeve brushed against my glass of cabernet and knocked it over—spilling red wine all over the Willises’ exquisite white lace tablecloth.

“Gosh, I’m so sorry!” I cried, watching the stain spread into a big red blob.

“Don’t worry, Patrice,” Pa Willis said. “Jan can clean it. She works at a dry cleaners.”

“She
writes
for a dry cleaners!” Scott cried, exasperated.

“I’m afraid I’ve ruined your beautiful tablecloth.” I moaned.

“No matter, dear,” Ma Willis said, her voice dripping icicles. “There’s another one at the Victoria and Albert Museum. We can go visit it when we’re back in England.”

The rest of the dinner passed in a mortifying blur. Rosita’s pork chops tasted like ashes in my mouth. In the background, I could hear Ma Willis and Chloe chatting away, and every once in a while I looked up to see Scott shooting me an encouraging smile. But all I could focus on was the big red blob of wine on the tablecloth. I was so depressed, I could barely finish my second helping of julienne potatoes.

At last the meal came grinding to a halt, and I excused myself, explaining that I had a long drive back to Alta Loco. By now, I could not wait to get out of there. And I was sure that, as far as Ma Willis was concerned, the feeling was mutual.

“I’ll walk you to your car,” Scott said, jumping up to join me as I started to leave.

“I can’t believe I spilled that wine on your mom’s tablecloth,” I said, as we headed out into the night.

“Accidents happen,” Scott said, taking my hand in his. “It’s no big deal.”

“It is a big deal. Your mom hates me. She hated me even before I spilled the wine.”

“She doesn’t hate you, Jaine. She’s tough with everybody. You should’ve seen her when she first met Chloe. She gave her the same frozen treatment she was giving you tonight. That’s just her way. She’ll warm up to you, just like she warmed up to Chloe.”

“About Chloe,” I said. “Are you sure it’s really over between you two?”

“Never been surer. And by the way,” he added, “I had no idea she was coming to dinner tonight. That was all Mom’s idea.”

“Does Chloe know it’s over? She seemed awfully chummy.”

“I don’t know what’s in Chloe’s head, but I know what’s in mine. There’s only one woman in my life right now,” he said, his big brown eyes gazing into mine. “And that woman is you.”

With that, he took me in his arms, and leaned in for a kiss. At last. Something fun was about to happen.

But just as our lips were about to meet, floodlights snapped on all around us.

I whirled around to see Ma Willis standing at the front door, arms crossed over her chest, Chloe at her side.

“It’s dark out there, Jaine,” she said, with her patented icy smile. “We didn’t want you to have another accident.”

She hated me, all right.

Chapter 7

I
drove home in a deep funk. I could not have made a worse impression on Scott’s parents if I’d showed up with an AK-47 strapped to my elastic-waist pants.

Damn those kimono sleeves. They should come with a safety warning.

By the time I got back to the hotel, it was after eleven and I couldn’t wait to climb into bed.

I let myself into my broom closet and was just about to get undressed when there was a knock on my door.

I opened to it to find Taylor standing there in her pajamas.

“You got the M&M’s?” she whispered, like a spy in a John le Carre novel.

“Of course,” I said, stifling a yawn as I ushered her inside.

“I thought my mom would never fall asleep,” she groaned, flopping onto my bed. “She’s been watching me like a hawk all day. She made me order the broiled fish at dinner and wouldn’t even let me have a roll. I’m positively famished!”

“Here you go,” I said, tossing her a bag of M&M’s with peanuts.

She ripped into it eagerly and popped one in her mouth.

That’s the difference between naturally skinny girls and the rest of us.

Never in a zillion years would it occur to me or you to eat M&M’s one at a time. Would it?

“Want some?” she asked, holding out the bag.

“I really shouldn’t,” I said, grabbing a few. All of which went sailing into my mouth simultaneously.

“Say,” she said, “would you mind awfully getting me a Coke from the vending machine? Regular, not diet.”

“Sure,” I replied, feeling a bit peppier after my dose of chocolate.

Grabbing my wallet, I headed down the hallway till I came to an alcove where the vending machines were located.

I was standing there, trying to iron out the creases in my dollar bill so it would fit in the vending machine slot, when I heard voices along the corridor.

At first they were muffled, but then I heard a man say, “But Candace. I don’t have that kind of money. I’m just a high school principal.”

It was Dr. Fletcher, he of the bow tie and grim lips. And apparently he was talking to Candace, our esteemed pageant director.

Who, by the way, seemed totally unmoved by his plea.

“Better find the money quick,” she said. “I want ten grand, or I’ll tell everybody the truth about you.”

By now I’d plastered myself against the far wall of the alcove, so as not to be caught eavesdropping on this little drama, and continued to listen to Dr. Fletcher throw himself on Candace’s mercy as they headed down the hallway.

What was that all about?
I wondered once their voices had faded away.

Clearly Candace was blackmailing Dr. Fletcher. But about what? It seemed hard to believe that the mild-mannered academic had any skeletons in his closet. On the other hand, I wasn’t the least bit surprised to learn that Candace was doing a spot of blackmailing.

Somehow I sensed that behind her pageant smile beat the heart of a street thug.

Back in my room, Taylor was stretched out on my bed, gratefully chomping down on M&M’s.

“So how was dinner?” I asked, plopping down on the bed beside her.

“Awful,” she replied. “Mom spent most of the meal trying to smell everybody, looking for the Vera Wang thief. I thought I’d die of embarrassment. And I had to sit there eating that icky fish, while Elvis was eating steak tidbits. Can you possibly think of a worse meal?”

“Unfortunately I can,” I said, images of Ma Willis flitting through my brain.

We spent the next fifteen minutes or so sucking up chocolate as Taylor shared her dreams of some day becoming a great writer.

“Just like Isabel Allende,” she said. “Only American, of course. And taller. With a really cute husband.”

When she’d had her fill of M&M’s, she bid me a fond farewell and headed back to her room.

By now it was after midnight and even my sugar rush couldn’t stem the tide of my exhaustion. I quickly got undressed and brushed my teeth, counting the seconds till my head hit the Amada Inn’s rock-hard pillow.

But just as I was about to pull back the comforter, there was a knock on my door.

Could it be Taylor, back for some more M&M’s?

With a sigh, I shuffled over to the door and opened it.

Imagine my surprise when I saw Lance.

“Lance! What are you doing here?”

“I’m going down to Palm Springs with Gary.”

“Who’s Gary?”

“The UPS guy! I finally got up my courage and asked him out. We had dinner tonight at the most divine sushi place, and over California rolls we decided to spend the weekend at Gary’s condo in Palm Springs. Isn’t that the most exciting news ever?”

At which point I heard a piercing yowl and looked down to see a cat carrier. With Prozac inside. She looked none too happy.

Stuff a sock in it, willya, and get me out of this cage!

“I almost forgot,” Lance said. “I came to drop off Prozac. Gary’s allergic to cats.”