Dial Om for Murder Read online

  There was no mistaking the genuineness of Andy’s reaction as he gaped at her. “Nick? You think Nick hit me?”

  “Didn’t he?”

  “Hell no!”

  “ Then what is the big mystery? You show up without warning, you’re limping, your face is bruised, you won’t talk to Nick. What is going on?”

  “He’s never laid a hand on me. He’s . . . he wouldn’t ever . . .” Words seemed to fail Andy.

  “ Then what? You want to play the field? What?”

  “A.J.” He stopped. Took a deep breath. “I have MS.”

  She stared. “What?”

  “I’ve been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.”

  A.J. knew she should say something but nothing occurred to her.

  Andy said with surprising steadiness, “I found out for sure a few days ago. I’ve been having problems with my balance and coordination, stiffness in my joints. Tremors in my hands. My vision goes in and out. I’m tired and feeling weak all the time. I kept thinking it was different things. Stress or fatigue or . . . Anyway, about a week ago I fell down. Just . . . fell. That’s when I got this.” He touched his cheekbone. “And I knew something was really wrong.”

  A.J. felt winded. She groped for words, found them at last. “And you haven’t told Nick?”

  Andy shook his head.

  “Why on earth not?”

  “Because we were already having problems. Arguing over his schedule and the fact that his job comes before everything else.”

  “Oh my God, Andy. And so . . . what? You don’t want to burden him? It’s not a burden when you love the person.”

  “Of course it is! It’s just that when you love someone you’re willing to take on the burden. But Nick and I . . . we don’t have that kind of relationship.”

  “I thought you were both so in love.” She couldn’t help the trace of acid there, although she did try.

  “We do love each other. But Nick didn’t bargain for this.”

  “How do you know? You haven’t given him a chance—”

  Andy interrupted sharply, “I know, all right? Before this ever happened we talked about our schedules and the future and what we both want and . . .” He struggled briefly with his emotions, then said more calmly, “ The kind of MS I have is the kind that progresses fast. I’m . . . probably going to be disabled. I mean, like in a wheelchair.”

  What a way to realize you still loved someone. A.J. took a deep breath. “Are you . . . going to die?”

  Andy shook his head. “MS doesn’t usually mean a shorter life span. But I’m going to be more and more dependent, and I can’t—I don’t want to do that to Nick. Even if he wanted that. Which he wouldn’t.”

  All at once A.J. understood Andy’s desire to lose himself in amateur sleuthing. No wonder he didn’t want to deal with his own real-life problems. She said, “But you’re not giving Nick the choice.”

  He said a little bitterly, “Nick didn’t have time for me when I was well.”

  She absorbed that silently. Nick Grant didn’t strike her as the nurturing kind, that was for sure.

  “I still think you should tell him.”

  She saw the tension leave Andy’s face as he realized he had won the most immediate battle. “I will,” he promised. “I just need a little more time to come to terms with it myself.”

  There really wasn’t much she could say to that.

  “‘Everything happens for a purpose.’ As the Bard said.”

  A.J. quit trying to calculate whether the difference in fat content between a skinny iced cinnamon dolce latte and a chai frappuccino would compensate for a slice of zucchini nut bread. She stared at her mother.

  “I think that’s the Bible, isn’t it?”

  “Is it?” Elysia blinked at her. Granted, Bible study had not played a large part in the Alexander family’s curriculum.

  They were sitting in the small crowded patio outside Starbucks where they had met for an early breakfast.

  Elysia brushed away the minor difference between God and the Bard with a lazy wave of her bronze tipped fingers. “My point, pumpkin, is that Andy has come back into your life—”

  “No he hasn’t.”

  “—at a time when you both—”

  “No we don’t.”

  “—need each other most.”

  “No.” A.J. scowled at Elysia. “No. No. No.”

  Unperturbed, Elysia sipped her black coffee and gazed soulfully up at the blossoming tree in the center of the patio. “I know you far too well, Anna, to believe you would turn your back on your husband in his hour of need.”

  Anna. So—incredibly—she was quite serious. This would take delicate handling. Which meant that hysterical laughter was probably out of the question. A.J. drew a deep breath, but all the deep, cleansing breaths in the world weren’t going to help. A wet vac wouldn’t help.

  “Mother, Andy and I are divorced, remember? Remember the part about Andy leaving me for another man?”

  Elysia’s face tightened, conveying vast world-weariness. Or perhaps she was merely doing her facial exercises. “Don’t be so unforgiving, pet. There is a reason Andrew has turned to you in his darkest hour.”

  An alarming thought occurred to A.J. “Did Andy tell you he wanted to get back together with me?”

  “Not in so many words,” Elysia hedged.

  “How many words did he use, and what were they?”

  “Men don’t discuss these things like women do.” Elysia cast A.J. a measuring look as though seeing whether she was buying it.

  A.J. was not buying it. In fact, this was the last thing she was in the market for. She gritted her jaw against a lot of things she would regret saying, and finally managed, “I understand that you mean well, Mother.”

  Elysia made a sound of near horror.

  Before she could open her mouth to protest, A.J. had changed the subject. “You still haven’t explained why you cut short your cruise.”

  The gray green eyes narrowed. “But of course I have. I heard—”

  “Yes, so you said. But I don’t see why you felt you had to end your vacation just because there was a murder in Stillbrook. What is it you’re not telling me?”

  Elysia reached for her pack of cigarettes, ignoring A.J.’s look of censure. She said, “ There are many things I don’t tell you, pumpkin, as I’d imagine there are many things you don’t share with me. But why I should have to explain my perfectly ordinary desire to return to my own home and hearth—and Tempur-Pedic mattress—”

  “All right already,” A.J. said. “But you looked like you were having such a wonderful time.”

  “I was. Mostly.”

  “Who was the good-looking young guy who seemed to be with you in all those photographs?”

  Elysia froze. It was just for a split second. “Hmmm?” she murmured. “Oh. That would be Dicky.” Her eyes met A.J.’s. “Dakarai Massri. He works for the SCA.”

  She did it beautifully, but A.J. was certain she hadn’t imagined that odd break.

  “I have no clue what the SCA is.”

  “ The Supreme Council of Antiquities.”

  “So he’s an archeologist or . . . ?”

  “Something like that,” Elysia said vaguely.

  “Very nice,” A.J. admitted. “If you like them newly hatched. You know, I think Mr. Meagher missed you. A lot.”

  “Bradley Meagher! That old fox.” Elysia’s honey-brown cheeks flushed prettily. “Why, we’ve been mates forever.”

  “I don’t think he thinks of you as just one of the lads.” A.J. glanced at her watch. “Damn. I’ve got to get over to the studio. I’m interviewing receptionists this morning.” She rose and tossed her plastic cup in the trash.

  “Come and have supper this evening,” Elysia invited. “You and Andrew. It’ll be like old times.”

  How could it possibly be like old times?

  Watching her, Elysia coaxed, “Humor your dear old mum. Besides, don’t you want to see the lovely prezzie I brought you?
”

  “You don’t have to bribe me to visit, Mother.”

  “Lawks. Times have changed,” Elysia cooed. “See you both at six.”

  “ Do you drug test?” Dana Pickles asked, glancing at her cell phone for the third time in two minutes.

  “Uh . . .” We do now, A.J. thought.

  Dana was the fourth and last candidate of the morning. Candidate number one had started the interview by asking to use the restroom and then spending the brief remainder of her interview time asking about the holiday work schedule, sick pay, and overtime. Candidate number two had turned out to be a cub reporter from the local paper hoping to score an interview with A.J. Candidate number three had been a no-show.

  Ms. Pickles was the most promising of the lot—and that was not saying much.

  “So!” A.J. automatically double-checked the list of questions on her notepad. “Why do you want to work for Sacred Balance?”

  Dana shrugged. “We were all talking. Me and my peeps. Oz said that this one sounded like an easy gig.”

  “Oz?”

  “Oz Siragusa.” Dana raised her immaculately groomed eyebrows at A.J.’s ignorance. “ The tennis star?”

  “Barbie Siragusa’s son?”

  “ That’s right.” Dana yawned. “After I got fi—left Tea! Tea! Hee!, I was trying to think of someplace else that might not be too big a PIA to work.”

  “And you thought of us,” A.J. murmured. “We’re honored.”

  “Actually, Oz thought of you.” Dana—an unexpected stickler for accuracy—added, “Barbie takes classes here.”

  A.J. remembered the hundred and thirty-seven text messages from Ball Boy downloaded from Nicole’s phone. Beyond the fact that Oz Siragusa was young, handsome, and spoiled rotten by his adoring mother, A.J. knew very little about him, although he had briefly—very briefly—taken a yoga course for athletic training.

  “Lots of people take lessons here. Nicole took lessons here.” A.J. wasn’t sure why she tossed that out. Maybe the sleuth reflex was genetic.

  Dana glanced down at her cell phone again. “I guess.” She couldn’t have sounded less interested.

  “So is it true? Were Oz and Nicole seeing each other?”

  “Sure,” Dana said indifferently. “ They were seeing each other. Till Nicole blew Oz off.”

  Apparently the idea that Nicole might have a previous commitment—like to her live-in boyfriend—had not occurred to Dana and her peeps. “Why would she do that?” A.J. asked.

  Dana shrugged, texting a lightning-fast message on her cell phone before looking up again. “Something about being too old for him. It’s total bewshit.”

  Bewshit?

  “How old is Oz?” A.J. couldn’t recall, but she wasn’t sure he was over eighteen.

  “ Twenty.”

  Twenty in boy years. Which in real life translated to . . . what? Sixteen? “Nicole was in her thirties. There was something like fifteen years between them.”

  “Yeah, she was old,” Dana said with the brutal frankness of a girl who had never seen a line in her face that didn’t come from a pillow crease.

  “Was Nicole . . . ?” This was so hard to imagine. “Did Nicole hang out with all of you?”

  Maybe it was even harder to imagine than she thought because Dana giggled, actually raising her eyes from her cell phone for an instant.

  “How did Oz take getting dumped?”

  Dana rolled her eyes. “Dude.”

  Which A.J. translated as not so much!

  “And Barbie knew about all this?”

  Dana looked puzzled. “Sure. Barbie’s cool.”

  Not that cool, A.J. thought. Nobody’s mom was that cool.

  “Anyway,” Dana said. “It wasn’t Oz getting dumped that pissed Barbie off. If you get what I mean.”

  Oh yes, A.J. got what Dana meant. She inquired with faint trepidation, “Did the breakup happen on an episode of Barbie’s reality show?”

  Dana went into peals of laughter at the idea. “No way!”

  So much for reality TV.

  Apparently it really wasn’t merely a rumor. Nicole had been having an affair with Barbie’s twenty-year-old son. Granted, the age of consent in New Jersey was sixteen, so while the relationship was liable to offend mothers, live-in boyfriends, and television viewers across the country, as scandals went, it wasn’t exactly the stuff of front page National Enquirer.

  “So?” Dana asked.

  “So what?” A.J. asked.

  “Do you drug test?”

  “Yes.”

  Dana made a face and put her cell phone away.

  A.J. asked, “What did Barbie say?”

  “About what?”

  “About Nicole dating her son?”

  “Oh,” Dana replied, unperturbed. “She said she’d kill her.”

  Twelve

  A.J. gasped. Andy braked gently as a rabbit darted out from the side of the road—changed its mind in the nick of time—and disappeared back into the tangle of underbrush.

  “He found a reason to live after all,” Andy declared.

  A.J. snickered at the reference to The Book of Bunny Suicides. They were on their way to Starlight Farm for supper with Elysia. Always a pretty drive, it was especially lovely in the pink-veined dusk, dogwood flowers glimmering palely beside the road, lights from old farmhouses and new mansions winking through the trees.

  “I don’t think there ever was an important phone call from a Hollywood producer,” she said, picking up the thread of their discussion once more. “I think Nicole was panicking over the idea of her cell falling into the wrong hands. Those multifunctional phones are like tiny laptops. Voice mails, e-mails—it would have all been there, including one hundred and thirty-seven text messages from the besotted scion of a mob family.”

  “Besotted scion!” Andy threw her an amused look. “ This is why you used to be so good at marketing. That special turn of phrase.” He continued, “It makes sense, though. It also explains why this important caller wouldn’t just dial in on the landline.”

  “Yes, except . . . how secret could this affair with Oz Siragusa have been? Oz’s pals seem to all know about it, and they aren’t exactly the closemouthed type.”

  “Maybe they found out after the fact.”

  “Maybe. I didn’t think to ask. Even so . . . Bryn must have known. She was Nicole’s PA. It would be hard to conceal an affair from her; at least part of her responsibilities would be scheduling Nicole’s daily activities.”

  “A big part of that job description is knowing how to keep your mouth shut.”

  “ True. But Bryn and J.W. seem awfully chummy.”

  “Oh ho?” Andy glanced away from the road again, eyes lighting with interest. He had insisted on driving that evening, and he did seem more energetic than he had when he had first arrived on Saturday.

  “Maybe not that chummy,” A.J. qualified. “But friendly, certainly.”

  “If J.W. Young knew about Nicole’s affair, that would give him a motive for murder.”

  “Not necessarily. Not everyone turns into Othello when they’re betrayed.” She hadn’t been thinking at all about their own situation, but Andy’s sudden silence indicated her words hit home. A.J. said hastily, “Besides, J.W. was flying in from Mexico at the time—”

  Her cell phone rang and she reached down to her purse.

  “Jake,” she identified, and pressed to answer. “Hi!”

  “Hey,” Jake said. “What are your plans for this Sunday?”

  “Nothing that I know of.”

  “I’ve got the day off. I was thinking maybe we could do something. Go somewhere.”

  “Sure!”

  “Where?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Where would you like to go?”

  “Oh. I don’t know.” Usually A.J. and Jake just went to eat or see a movie. Sometimes both. This sounded more complicated—and more entertaining.

  “Well, you think about it,” Jake said.

  They chatted a little
more—and that was different, too. Jake usually didn’t make time for small talk on the phone.

  “How is the case coming?” A.J. asked. “Have you found Jane Peters yet?”

  Sounding uncharacteristically weary, Jake said, “No. She’s apparently dropped off the face of the earth.”

  “Well, she’s probably hiding.”

  “ Then she’s doing it like a pro.” His voiced faded away, then he came back on and said, “Got to go. Talk to you later.”

  And with that he clicked off.

  A.J. tucked her phone back in her purse and tried to get her smile under control. Her gaze slid sideways and caught Andy’s.

  “Don’t say it,” she warned.

  Andy chuckled.

  The emerald green door to Starlight Farm swung wide. Elysia stood framed in the arch of roses around the entranceway. Tanned and rested from her recent holiday, she looked radiant in a gorgeous red silk caftan, her dark hair coiled elegantly on her head. She looked like an older version of herself in the 1972 racy historical epic A Night with Nefertiti. In fact, A.J. would have suspected her mother of setting up one of her “entrances,” except that Elysia was staring as though she had never seen them before.

  “Well, well!” she said brightly, after a funny pause. “Pumpkin. Andrew. What a lovely surprise.”

  “It shouldn’t be.” A.J. said. “You invited us to dinner.”

  “I . . . ?” Elysia blinked and then seemed to re-collect herself. “But of course! Of course, I did. Come in, pet. Andrew, darling boy, how are you feeling?”

  “I’m fine, Ellie,” Andy said quickly, clearly uncomfortable with the suggestion that he might not be hale and hearty to his buffed fingertips.

  “Such a brave lad,” Elysia said, patting his cheek. She was moving them—shooing them, in fact, straight through to the living room. “Sit, lovies. What would you like to drink? Lemon squash? Fruit juice? Soft drinks? Coffee or tea?”

  “Iced tea,” Andy requested.

  “Same,” said A.J. She could have used a real drink, but Elysia, now a successful nine years sober, did not keep alcohol on the premises.

  “Right-o!” Elysia said brightly. “ Tea for two coming up. Make yourselves comfy. As the Bard said, ‘Mi casa es su casa.’”