The Case of the Stained Stilettos Read online

  Dana’s image-shapers knew all of this, and played into the public’s perception of her as a complicated woman who drank a bit too much and laughed a bit too loudly. Behind the scenes, studio doctors prescribed tranquilizers to dampen her effusive moods, transforming them into something more “ladylike.”

  Despite her carefully crafted image as a “Hollywood bad girl,” however, Dana Montgomery rarely lived up to the hype. A homebody at heart, she loved her late husband, Daniel, and her son Mark, and would have been just as happy teaching grade school and baking cookies as she was lighting up marquees.

  Not many people knew that Dana. Her public persona, a combination of extreme elegance with the never-surrender attitude of a Sherman tank, had been cultivated carefully almost from the day she got off the bus from … well, nobody knows that either. Nor has almost anyone ever known that the teenage boy in tow was her brother, Wesley … a brother whom she vowed to always protect.

  To ensure that she could fulfill that promise, Dana stuck to her carefully crafted image, because, frankly, it paid the bills. From the beginning, she knew she would have to ride that train until the train refused to chug along one more day. So, she “lived the image” until she “became the image” … at least most days, and not always deep down in her soul…

  ***

  Just as Dana leaves the library, a Bella Palermo Catering truck slips onto the property and creeps along the north end of the driveway, parking by the kitchen.

  Beth Luker emerges from the van and shuts the door quietly. Looking around and seeing no one, she sneaks past the kitchen door and takes a winding path behind the ficus bushes that encircle the house.

  Beth is supposed to be there to review party plans with the staff, and she will get to that, but she has something to attend to first. A little trip down memory lane.

  Crouching behind a manicured shrub outside the library, Beth peers through the bay windows. From her hiding place, her eye is drawn to the room’s mahogany paneling. Large posters in ornate frames line the walls of the library, displaying painted copies of the playbills for four Broadway plays. They read:

  Daniel Lathem and Dana Montgomery

  in

  HAMLET

  Dana Montgomery and Daniel Lathem

  in

  CLEOPATRA

  Dana Montgomery-Lathem and Daniel Lathem

  in

  ALL ABOUT EVE

  Dana Montgomery-Lathem and Daniel Lathem

  in

  THE PHILADELPHIA STORY

  Also starring Francesca Wilde and Blaine Jeffries

  “Poor Blaine,” she mutters. “Always playing second fiddle to Dame Dana.” She remembers how sweet Blaine was to her after her scene with Susan the day before. On her way out of the classroom, he had praised her “deep dive” into Ophelia’s madness.

  Before long, Beth’s thighs ache from crouching. She sits on the ground, cross-legged, pushing up on her hands to see through the windows.

  How unfair, she thinks. A travesty, that she should have to hide in the bushes outside this mansion that was basically her second home from grade school until the end of high school. This house that would have been hers, if not for that menopausal mess, Dana Montgomery. Dana, who almost became her mother-in-law. Dana, who drove Beth out of Mark’s life, and out of this house, for no crime other than being young and beautiful.

  Yes, she had to admit, the situation had been a little more complicated than that. Complications, she knew, were an unavoidable side-effect of being poor in a world of great wealth and status.

  Beth and Sal had been friends with Dana’s son, Mark Lathem, since they were all kids. They met at Mark’s private school, where Beth and Sal had received full scholarships from Grade Five to Grade Twelve. Although Beth and Sal were often referred to privately by the school’s snobbish parents as “those sponsored kids,” their friendship with Dana’s son made their presence in the school more tolerable. It also opened a lot of doors.

  As kids, Sal and Beth spent as much time at Le Coeur Bel as possible. Unlike their own homes, the mansion had a basketball court, a pool, and a huge yard. At the time, Mark’s mother, Dana, always went out of her way to be sweet to them. However, after Beth turned sixteen, it was as if a light switch had been flipped. Dana began eyeing Beth with open suspicion as the young woman blossomed into a nubile beauty. It did not help that she obviously caught the eye of Dana’s husband, Blaine Jeffries, a legendary flirt who never missed an opportunity to hover around Beth and engage her in chit chat whenever they were in the house together.

  Sal did not like the Blaine-Beth connection either. He had been in love with Beth since the day they met. He spent most of their grade school and junior high school years waiting patiently for her to move him out of the friend zone and into the boyfriend zone. Beth sort of knew this, but even at a young age, she had her sights set on success. While Sal was a good guy who would be a great boyfriend for almost any girl, he could not help her with her lifelong goal to be rich and famous. For that, she needed Sal’s best friend, Mark Lathem, and most of all, Mark’s mother.

  Having concluded that Mark and Dana were the two people who could do her the most good in life, Beth decided that Dana’s son was the man of her dreams … real feelings or not. She was not going back to the other side of the freeway. All of those dinners of warmed up mac and cheese, the hand-me-down clothing, the embarrassment of having their power turned off for lack of payment in the middle of her pathetic eighth birthday party — all of the cringing realities of her upbringing would be safely behind her, if Beth had anything to say about it, and she believed she did.

  All through junior high and high school, Beth fought for Mark’s attention. She helped with his homework. She cheered him on at basketball and baseball games. She sat in the front row at his school plays, and when they were old enough, in their junior year of high school, she became his first “serious” girlfriend.

  She hung around Le Coeur Bel so much that casual acquaintances thought she lived there, and she did nothing to correct that perception … especially since that was her goal.

  But, as the saying goes, life is what happens to people while they are busy making other plans. For Beth, that interruption came in the form of Blaine Jeffries, Dana’s fourth husband. His attentiveness to Beth, which began innocently enough, soon got so out of hand that it landed her definitively on Dana’s bad side, where nobody wants to be.

  She remembers the day she was banished from the household. Beth and Mark had just been swimming in their pool and had come inside for a glass of orange juice. Beth wandered into the kitchen first, wearing only flip flops and a gold-colored bikini that she bought for next to nothing at a consignment store in LA. Blaine was sitting at the kitchen counter, reading Variety, when she slid open the screen door and wandered across the terra cotta floor to the refrigerator.

  “Oh, my goodness, look at you,” Blaine had said, peering over his reading glasses.

  Beth had smiled and turned around slowly with a jug of juice in her hands, and had come over to the island to pour a glass. With her juice in hand, she leaned onto the counter and took a sip. He smiled at her and leaned back, lowering his paper to take in more of the view.

  “What are you reading?” she asked.

  “I have no idea what I was reading,” he said, then put down his newspaper, stood up, and came around the island to put a bowl in the sink next to Beth. He noticed Beth’s shoulders, which were showing the beginning of a bad sunburn. Blaine lifted one of her straps off her skin, causing her to stand up straight and look at her own shoulder. She grimaced.

  “Oh, girl, don’t you wear sunscreen?”

  “I forgot!” she said, surveying the damage.

  Blaine took a small paring knife from a drawer. “This will help,” he said. He walked to a window and sliced a leaf off an enormous aloe plant that Dana kept in case of burns. He squeezed a dollop of pulp onto his palm. He was just beginning to dab it on her shoulders when Mark came in from the pool and
, a second later, Dana appeared in the kitchen doorway. Mother and son froze, as did Blaine and Beth, but within a few seconds, Dana was charging toward Beth and Blaine in a long white caftan, her normally beautiful face contorted with anger.

  “What is going on here?” Dana had demanded, muscling between Blaine and Beth as Mark walked toward the three of them, looking confused.

  “I have a sunburn,” Beth said, somewhat stupidly. But before she could explain, Dana was pushing her out through the screen doors, while Mark called out “Mom, Mom!” and Blaine stood by silently, fuming.

  Within a month of the incident, Mark had found a flimsy reason to break up with Beth — something about needing space — and Beth did not step foot in the house for eight months. It had taken the passage of time, and two engagements — Sal’s to Beth and Mark’s to Susana — as well as a lot of persuasion from Sal to convince Dana that Beth should be allowed to coordinate the catering staff for her upcoming Pool and Pool Party.

  Today, once again on the outside looking in, Beth peers through the bay windows, dreaming of the life she still wants. Inside, a sprightly fire bounces in the fireplace, despite the fact that it is rarely cold enough in Los Angeles to need a fire. Having spent so much time at Le Coeur Bel, she knows that on the other side of the glass, the air conditioner is set to sixty degrees to counteract the fire’s warmth and the heat of the afternoon.

  “Money to burn,” Beth mumbles in disgust.

  Chapter 6

  It is Friday at 1 p.m., and James Crayton is sitting at a table for two at Red Rock Japanese Steakhouse. He leans back in his chair. Across from him, Detective Lucienne Wilde works on a Jadori Egg entree.

  They have been going around in circles for half an hour. James knows his chances of winning this round are fifty-fifty at best. He straightens his back, levels her with his gaze, and does his best impression of a superior officer pulling rank.

  “I could order you to do this, you know,” he says.

  Lucienne smiles sweetly, “Or, you could appeal to me as one of your favorite goddaughters…”

  James’s stern look gives way to surprise. “Would you do it then?”

  Lucienne bursts into laughter. “Of course not. You need Mercy for this gig.”

  “But I need an LAPD liaison to deal with the local studios, and your sister doesn’t work for the LAPD.”

  “So, hire her,” Lucienne says, taking another bite.

  “Like that would happen,” James says. “No, it has to be you. And I don’t see the problem. Your mother is the great Francesca Wilde. Why can’t you go talk to these people once a month or so?”

  Lucienne blots her mouth and looks at her godfather. “Three reasons: I don’t do designer clothes. I don’t wear designer shoes. And I don’t do phonies. Do you have any idea how many people totally change their tone when they find out I’m related to the Francesca Wilde? Just hearing my name makes them act weird.”

  “So what if people treat you differently for being a Wilde? I would think that you’d be proud.”

  “Of course, I am,” Lucienne says, not taking the bait. “But they’re not interested in what a good person Mom is or how talented she is. They just want to pitch her their projects. She’s a commodity. She has a manager and an agent who make good money filtering pitches. I’m not interested in putting more on her plate … or on mine … unless you have a more substantial assignment.”

  James gives up and smiles at her, more impressed than upset.

  “I do, and I see your point,” he says. “I think there will be something soon. I just have to finalize some details first. Now, finish your lunch. I hear you got a workout with that purse snatcher this morning.”

  Lucienne smiles a little victory smile and finishes her tea.

  Chapter 7

  Back in Beverly Hills after a quick lunch with Joseph, Mercy Wilde props her Louboutin-clad feet on her desk and leans back in her chair. She is worried because she has only one month to put together the most perfect anniversary party ever held.

  Looking at her credenza, she scans a row of framed photos in search of inspiration.

  Mercy’s gaze lands on a photo of her parents, Francesca “Ches” and Stephen Wilde, from a studio party on the night they met. Like a storyboard, each frame offers a new piece of the story: Francesca and Stephen’s wedding … baby Mercy coming home from hospital … toddler Mercy standing on tiptoe to see her newborn sister, Lucienne, cradled in Francesca’s arms. Mercy’s and Lucienne’s high school and college graduations. Mercy’s graduation from law school. Lucienne’s from the police academy. Mercy and Joseph’s wedding.

  Then her gaze settles on the photo that always brings a stab of pain: Francesca and Stephen’s last anniversary before his shocking death at the hands of a domestic abuser whose wife Stephen had represented, pro bono, in her divorce case. The single gunshot wound that left him fighting for his life for three days. The doctors finally telling the family there was nothing more they could do.

  It was that tragedy, and the family’s dedication to duty and to helping the less fortunate, that prompted both Wilde daughters to choose careers in law enforcement.

  Mercy’s sister, Lucienne, graduated from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan, Columbia Law, and the LAPD Police Academy, before joining the Los Angeles Police Department. She could have practiced law, but she loved a good chase so much that it made more sense for her to work on the front lines.

  Not unlike her sister, Mercy Wilde also used her law degree to catch criminals, but under her own shingle. A former defense attorney, she got sick of defending the guilty and went to work for the FBI as a profiler, and later parlayed that experience into running her own private detective firm.

  In their training and career choices, the Wilde sisters are well matched. But in almost every other area, including the all-important arena of fashion, they are chalk and cheese. While Mercy always looks like she just wandered in off a catwalk, Lucienne’s wardrobe can best be described as “practical,” with a closet full of blazers, slacks and flats.

  A running joke describes Mercy’s many “retired” pairs of heels. Pair after pair has suffered an early death for one reason: Mercy, always ready to chase a suspect while wearing stilettos, is not about to wear any heels that have been scuffed during a perp’s capture. One long shelf of her closet has become a colorful graveyard for heels too pretty to toss out, and too imperfect to wear in public. Mercy loves to look at them, but once a Louboutin or a Jimmy Choo has a chunk taken out of it, it is taken out of circulation.

  Lucienne always offers to lend her sister sensible shoes for stakeouts, to which Mercy replies with a dry, “No thank you,” before they burst into laughter. No matter how many pairs of stilettos Mercy has to retire, she cannot see herself in rubber-soled walking shoes from some German or Danish company specializing in practical comfort. The thought of looking down at her feet and seeing Velcro straps or laces hurts her soul.

  Mercy’s philosophy is simple: everything in her closet can be replaced, she reasons, so why sacrifice fashion? Still, she wonders whether Chanel or Valentino or Louboutin would still would have sold her that Little Black Dress or red-soled stilettos had they known she would be scaling a wall or hurtling over a car hood while wearing their designer duds.

  Mercy wipes the day’s dirt from her stiletto, as her mind returns to the upcoming anniversary fête. She picks up the framed picture of her husband, Joseph Luce, which sits prominently in the middle of her oversized mahogany desk, her pride-and-joy acquisition from the Hunter S. Thompson estate.

  She glances at her computer to check her agency’s schedule for the week. She sees that a potential client, Andres Alfonso, sent an email requesting the services of Wilde Investigations to keep an eye on his daughter. Before she leaves, Mercy replies to Señor Alfonso that, regrettably, she cannot accept his case as his daughter is engaged to the son of her mother’s best friend, and that there could be a potential conflict of interest.

  Having seen
Mark and Susana Alfonso several times at social functions, Mercy cannot think of an assignment more boring than keeping “an eye” on the young woman who never met a mirror that she did not love.

  Chapter 8

  Andres Alfonso is a brilliant man who parlayed his success as a pharmaceutical researcher into a top-ten company in the “Big Pharma” stable. Having grown up in Piaui, the poorest state in Brazil, Andres managed to work his way through school, sometimes sleeping less than two hours per night between studying and work.

  When Andres completed university, he landed a job with growth potential, and he took full advantage of every opportunity that came his way. His role expanded through hard work and he quickly rose to a prominent position within the company.

  Five years later, through the patents he obtained, he had become so successful that he could afford to buy the company. It only got better from there.

  He met the beautiful and refined Emilia La Justicia. They had three beautiful children, Susana, Teodoro and Mia.

  Susana, the eldest of the three, is a striking beauty as if God combined the best traits of Sofía Vergara, Penelope Cruz and Salma Hayek, then improved on His creation.

  Susana’s combination of beauty, brains and money could have snagged her any man she wanted, assuming he passed her father’s inspection. She intended to land the perfect man … perfect for her, at least, tut she had other goals, too. The first time her parents took Susana to the movies, she looked at the stars on the screen and knew that she would take her place among them. She would, she understood immediately, become nothing less than a Hollywood legend.

  Andres and Emilia were less than thrilled with their daughter’s aspirations. With her intelligence and education, they felt she should run Alfonso Pharmaceuticals someday, not waste her time in an industry full of bubblehead blondes and lecherous old men.