Read an Excerpt
The Flaming Luau of Death
A Madeline Bean Novel
Chapter One
Male
(Married)
A tall, willowy blonde stood silently in the doorway to my office. She was wrapped, all six feet of her, in one striking color. Bright pink flip-flops with matching toenail polish. Hot pink jeans and jacket over a tiny pink bandeau. Shocking pink sailor's cap tipped at an angle above her white-blond bangs. How long had this vision of raspberry sherbet been standing there?
"Holly." My voice sounded calm. Good. I remembered to smile. "Wow. You're early today."
"Um," she said. "I was actually kind of hoping I could maybe talk to you. Just for a minute. You know, if you have time."
I straightened a few papers absently and in the process scuttled the ocean turquoise travel brochure for Hawaii beneath the pile of chef's catalogs and order forms on my desk, where it had been sticking out like a Britney Spears fan at a Julie Andrews concert.
"Hey, then," I said to my assistant, intoning just the right casual, cheerful note. "Sit down."
"Where's Wesley?" she asked, arranging her lean legs in a puzzle of twists as she took the chair opposite my desk.
"Kitchen." I casually swept aside the pile of papers on my desk. "Doing Friday-morning stuff."
Wesley Westcott and I own an event-planning company in Los Angeles, going on eight years, which we operate out of my house. Holly has been with us almost from the start. Our firm does every kind of way-out party. Every kind. From the killer "Mock" Mitzvah we threw for the thirteen-year-old daughter of a millionaire rapper -- never mind that the family is Southern Baptist -- to a series of small dinners for a hip mahjongg club of Hollywood Hills gamblers, we just kind of elevate the celebratory insanity to meet our town's taste for the lavish. For each event, Wes and Holly and I work out every detail, plan every menu option, and spend a ton of our clients' cash to achieve, as close as we ever can, a perfect party.
"Look, I know you're busy," Holly said, her manner much more subdued than her outfit. "But ... "
"What's up?"
Holly fiddled with the enormous pink diamond on her third finger. "You know how I am, right?"
I began to pay closer attention. Aside from the standard-for-Holly outrageous wardrobe -- the blinding garb and the neon-hued lipstick -- I was beginning to perceive that this didn't look entirely like my usual Holly. My usual Holly was a million smiles, a pedal-to-the-metal talker. But now she was quiet. And I noticed her twisting her ring around and around. "Is something wrong, sweetie? Are you having some" -- there had to be a kinder word than doubts -- "some thoughts about your wedding, Holl?"
"Yeah. How'd you ... ?" She looked up at me. "Well, yeah."
"Is it Donald?"
"Donald? No, no. Donald is great. He's fine."
"Okay, then. Cool." The way she was acting had me worried there.
"Donald?" she said, laughing. "He's fantastic. What a guy!"
In only two weeks' time, Holly Nichols was to have her big dream wedding and become Mrs. Donald Lake. There had been all the usual plans and festivities. I thought they were extremely cute together. But truthfully, as a couple, they'd been through more than their share of ups and downs. On any given month, frankly, it was difficult to remember if they were on or off. But for most of the past six months, they'd been on. Way on. I looked at my watch: 8:34. We had twenty-six minutes, but I really should have been in the kitchen already working with Wes, so ... "Okay, talk."
"Maddie, you know how you help people sometimes? Not just with planning the parties. I mean how you can solve problems for people. Like you look into things and figure them out."
"I like to get to the bottom of things. Yes."
"Take a look at this." Holly unzipped her hot pink purse, a narrow leather roll hardly large enough to hold a tube of lipstick and a pack of mints. She pulled out a piece of white copier paper that had been folded, fanlike, into a tiny slip, and handed it across the desk to me.
I unpleated the paper. It held a printed message and appeared to be a printout from Holly's e-mail account. Netscape, I noticed right away, and in the subject field, it read: Ugly Trouble Coming. The e-mail was from: nmfchef@gotmail.com, but that meant nothing. Anyone could set up a gotmail account -- they were free and untraceable -- and hide their true identity. The date field said 5:02 this morning. It was addressed to Holly Dubinsky at holly@madbeanevents.com, her company e-mail account. The note read:
Mrs. Dubinsky,
Your husband won't be able to hide forever. And if we can't find him, we'll come and do our dirty business with you. Be smart. Give us Marvin and we'll leave you alone.
It was not signed.
"But," I said, rereading the note, "it's a mistake. You're Holly Nichols. Your husband-to-be is a screenwriter named Donald Lake. This is not you."
"Well ... "
I looked up. Holly repositioned herself, rewrapping, right over left, long thin pink-denim legs.
"There's this other thing. And I wasmeaning to get to this other thing, Mad. I was meaning to. But time just sort of slipped away from me."
"This other thing?"
Holly tipped her jaunty cap at a slightly different angle and chewed her lip.
I waited as patiently as I could, considering Wes was presently in the kitchen just down the hall at the back of the house, receiving our secret guests all alone, and probably wondering why I was taking so long. Finally I could hold it in no longer. "Holly? This other thing?"
The Flaming Luau of Death
A Madeline Bean Novel. Copyright © by Jerrilyn Farmer. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
