Adorably Dead

By Lindsay Maracotta

A “Dead is the New Fabulous” Mystery (#3)
“Lindsay Maracotta has created in Lucy an exhilarating smart and sassy character. Her insider’s take crackles with fresh insight and laugh-out-loud one-liners.” —Janet Evanovich, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author
“Killingly amusing. Lindsay Maracotta wields the sharpest tongue since Nora Ephron banged out Heartburn. The book’s social observations are right on the money.” —The Chicago Tribune
Lucy Frampton lives amid the glitzy trappings of Los Angeles. Her friends enjoy intimate relationships with aroma therapists and body sculptors, and her neighbors' estates boast screening rooms and humidity-controlled wine cellars. The exclusive Windermere Academy, which her daughter, Chloe, attends, has a shrink on the payroll to lead "encounter sessions" when tiny tempests threaten the students' sunny days. And even bit players in the Windermere school pageants have publicists and agents.
But Lucy, a sensible, transplanted Midwesterner, keeps her sights down-to-earth. She's an outstanding mom, a sexy wife, and an animator whose career is rocketing. But then, in a flash, her perfect world of storyboard mornings and car-pool afternoons goes from romantic comedy to film noir.
Lucy's new nanny, Brandon, college friend—and onetime lover (but that's another story)—is shot dead while driving her husband's car. It's unclear who the intended victim was, but then Lucy stumbles upon something even more chilling: a video hidden among Brandon's things that shows a child committing a murder.
Though the authorities yawn, Lucy suspects the killer is cruising through classrooms and lunchrooms, as dewy-eyed innocent as any other kid. With a razor wit and a hilarious irreverence for the trappings of fame as her only weapons, Lucy launches a one-woman investigation, leading smack into the looking-glass world of child actors, where nine-year-olds can fire their own parents, where a child's smile commands top dollar—and a little killer is about to have the last laugh!

• Language: English
• Publisher: NYLA
• Release date: Aug 6, 2014
• ISBN: 9781625179333

Lindsay Maracotta

Lindsay’s first success as a writer was her sixth grade Thanksgiving play, about a plucky Pilgrim girl and her wise-cracking pet turkey. She has since written for Glamour, Harper’s, Mademoiselle, and the L.A. Times Magazine, notably doing the Playboy Interview with the cast of Saturday Night Live. She is the author of the laugh-out-loud Dead Is The New Fabulous mystery series, starring the vintage-wearing, wise-cracking, animator-turned-sleuth Lucy Frampton, was twice a Sisters In Crime notable book and was adapted by Hallmark Channel as the movie The Hollywood Moms Mystery, starring Justine Bateman, Elizabeth Pena, and George Hamilton, with Lindsay serving as Executive Producer. Her most recent novel, The Producer’s Daughter, is a selection of The Book of the Month Club, The Mystery Writer’s Book Club, and the Literary Guild Book Club. She is also the author of the chilling suspense novel, Hide & Seek, a national bestseller that was translated into nine languages, and Everything We Wanted, a contemporary women’s fiction novel. Writing as Lindsay Graves, she’s also the author of the wickedly-funny The Ex-Wives series. Lindsay wrote for the Emmy-winning HBO suspense series The Hitchhiker and recently co-produced the movie Breaking at the Edge, a supernatural thriller starring Milo Ventimiglia, Rebecca Da Costa, and Andie MacDowell. She lives in the Hollywood Hills with her husband and two ready-for-their-close-ups cats.

Book preview

Chapter One

Isuppose that when you are about to go downtown to identify your husband’s body at the county morgue, you shouldn’t be obsessing over what to wear.

Nevertheless, that was exactly what I was doing. For the past fifteen minutes, I’d been hovering before the mostly vintage clothes in my closet, unable to decide whether the dusty plum-colored forties suit with fitted peplum jacket would be unsuitably snug over the seventeen-weeks-pregnant bulge of my midriff, or if the roomier canary yellow chemise a la Jackie Kennedy would look too Merry Widow, or whether I should just go with a librarian-ish tweed ensemble from the thirties.

Meanwhile, the LAPD detective who had brought me the news that Tom had been shot and killed was waiting downstairs in the foyer, no doubt shuffling his sturdy crepe soles and peering at his Timex, wondering what in God’s name I could possibly be up to.

Perhaps the reason I was in such a fog was that until the arrival of Detective Langocetti, it had been a perfectly normal Tuesday. Normal for our household, that is. Tom, a movie and series producer, had raced out the door some minutes before eight, grumbling about a sticky budget meeting at Netflix. I sat at the breakfast bar, munching Granola Crunch with my ten-year-old daughter, Chloe, listening to her complaints about the totally lame uniforms her school had just imposed, until her carpool arrived and whisked her away.

Then I’d propelled myself into my home studio to work on my latest animation assignment—a song for Sesame Street on the Seven Basic Food Groups. I’d spent several hours scanning my drawings of jitterbugging artichokes and acrobatic lamb chops into my computer.

When I finally quit working, it was off to the veterinarian to pick up Rollins, the African red-bellied parrot who was the latest addition to Chloe’s ever-expanding menagerie. He’d come down with some languishing parrot disease. The bill was a cool nineteen hundred and eighty bucks, including X-rays, medications, and a blood transfusion. On the drive back, Rollins had celebrated his recovery by squawking snappy new phrases he'd picked up at the vet’s: Sick puppy! You poor thing, you! No food, no water!

At home, I stood luxuriating under the spray of a long, hot shower. I mulled over the deeper questions of life, such as: what sex would my newborn baby be? and where did they get parrot blood for parrot transfusions? and just what was the evolutionary purpose of cellulite? I peered out with a start when my housekeeper, Graciela, appeared in the bathroom. Then felt a twinge of alarm—Graciela was not in the habit of intruding on my private functions.

Mrs. Lucy? she said. The policeman is here.

Policeman? I echoed. What does he want?

He say he want to talk to you. Through the water-sheeted glass of the shower stall, Graciela appeared painted by an Impressionist, one of the gauzier ones like Berthe Morisot. He say is important.

Visions of Chloe’s carpool hijacked by a gang of sex offenders jolted my brain. I’ll be right down, I said.

I shut off the taps and reached for a robe—Tom’s white terrycloth with the Hotel Georges V insignia. I turbaned a white towel over my sopping hair and padded barefoot downstairs.

A bristle-haired detective in an itchy-looking herringbone jacket glanced up. He had a stolid, full face with a protruding lower lip and pendulous earlobes that made me think of the old cartoon character Deputy Dawg.

Mrs. Thomas Frampton? His tone implied that a yes would be grounds for condolences.

Though the rest of my body was still damp, my mouth felt suddenly dry. I gave a curt nod.

I’m Detective Roy Langocetti. I’d like to speak to you for a moment. He paused, gazing a bit doubtfully at my turban and terry-cloth robe ensemble: this being Los Angeles, it could well have been the costume of some let’s-greet-the-solar-eclipse-with-cyanide cult.

I was just taking a shower. I pulled the robe tighter at my neck. What’s this all about? Has something happened to my daughter?

No, no, it’s nothing about your daughter. Could we possibly sit down somewhere? He looked like George Brent in Dark Victory when he has to tell Bette Davis her brain operation was not a success.

We can go in here.

I led the way into the adjoining family room and perched on the edge of the sectional. The detective chose an armchair. His eyes inventoried some of the room's more unusual decor: a garland of vividly colored cupids left over from Valentine’s Day; a fake Al Capone-era machine gun that was a prop from Tom’s first feature film; Rollins the parrot preening in his cage.

Would you please tell me what this is all about? I said sharply.

Langocetti's eyes snapped back to me. I’m afraid I have some bad news. The driver of a green BMW registered to your husband has been shot and killed. It happened on a small street off Topanga Canyon.

Tom’s been shot? I repeated. The killed part hadn’t registered yet. Someone who only hours before had bounced out of the house humming an off-key rendition of Viva La Vida couldn't just blink out of existence.

We don’t have a positive identification yet,’’ Langocetti said quickly. There was no wallet or ID on the body, and any watch or rings had been removed."

They stole his watch? I was still in an uncomprehending daze. All I could think of was how pissed off he’d be at losing his new Apple Ultra.

It might have been a robbery. Or the perpetrator might have just wanted it to look like a robbery to disguise other motives. We can’t say just yet.

You’re a very sick puppy! Rollins chose that unfortunate moment to squawk.

Langocetti gave a start.

Sorry, he’s just come back from the vet, I muttered. With a sensation of sleepwalking, I went over to the parrot’s cage and tented it.

When was the last time you spoke to your husband? the detective asked.

When he left the house this morning. A couple of minutes before eight.

Could you try contacting him now?

Yes, certainly. With an icy hand, I got out my phone and punched his number. No answer. I called his office number. Where’s Tom? I quavered to his native-of-Malibu secretary Amber.

Gee, I dunno, she replied. He called at nine-thirty from his car and said the meeting at the studio had been cut short, but he wouldn’t be back to the office till after lunch. Want me to...

I cut her off, then called Tom’s cell again. Voicemail. Call me now! I pressed END. I felt clammy and disoriented. I gave a little shake of my head to the detective.

Did your husband have a California driver’s license under any other name?

Another name?

The victim’s fingerprints don’t appear to be on file in Sacramento.

I slumped back onto the sofa. Tom liked to keep a Georgia license, where his parents live. It was just some quirk, something to do with hanging on to his roots.

Langocetti nodded, as if he’d suspected this all along. Could you perhaps describe your husband? Height, weight, hair...

A sudden surge of panic made me giddy-headed. I began to babble whatever came into my head. He’s about exactly six feet tall. Blond hair, a tiny bit thinning on top, I always tease him about how he’s going to start looking like a monk. I’m not sure about his weight, he never gets on the scale if I’m in the room, but he tends to get a kind of padding in the middle when he’s not working out… I realized I was starting to sound crazy, even to myself. Why don’t I just show you a photo? I finished weakly.

That would be helpful, but not conclusive. You see, ah...the victim sustained a close-range gunshot to the face. The facial features are no longer identifiable.

I felt like all the breath had been sucked from my body with a giant straw. Langocetti was saying something else, but it was as if he were speaking some unfamiliar language, Swahili, perhaps, or Esperanto.

What? I asked.

Does your husband have any identifying marks or scars?

I forced some air into my lungs. Marks? Um, I know he has some moles... For some reason, the only way I could picture Tom at all was in his daily uniform of a soft cotton shirt and slightly -faded jeans. The Deputy Dawg eyes fixed rather dolefully on me. I could surmise his thoughts: Lady can’t describe her husband in the buff. Must’ve had one helluva sex life.

I had the sudden loony desire to laugh. Look, this doesn't make any sense at all. You’re talking about something that happened in Topanga Canyon, that couldn’t possibly be Tom. He had an extremely important meeting at Netflix, that’s in Hollywood, way the hell over on the other side of town, and it was supposed to go on for hours. I mean, he couldn't have just flown over to Topanga, could he? My voice was ascending into a cartoon-worthy falsetto.

Is there somebody I could call to be here with you? Langocetti crooned soothingly.

Can I see the body?

It’s not necessary. We can identify it through dental records...

I want to see him now! I screeched.

Okay, okay, if you’re sure, then yes, I can take you down to the morgue. His glance flicked again at my ensemble of white terrycloth.

I’ll go change.

In a daze, I had stumbled up to my bedroom, threw open my closet and here I’d remained, lost in that riveting, existential confrontation with my wardrobe.

Just wear anything, for God’s sake. I now grabbed at random what seemed to be a suitably sober-colored jacket and pair of trousers and pulled them on. I crammed my bare feet into a pair of thick-soled mules, then clattered rapidly back downstairs.

Langocetti directed an even more perplexed squint at me, as if this outfit were no great improvement on the turban and robe. My hair, I thought—left to dry on its own, it was probably beginning to resemble a maple-colored fright wig. I mashed it back behind my ears.

I’m ready, let’s go, I said.

He led me out to an SUV the color of Grey Poupon. I slumped into the front seat beside him, and we glided off, sans siren, but accompanied by the crackling and hiccupping of the radio. At the end of the block, my elderly neighbor Mr. Goldenstein glanced up from scooping the poop of his Cairn Terrier. I checked my impulse to wave: it was not the occasion for breezy social conventions.

My thoughts were starting to collect themselves—kind of the way Wile E. Coyote, after being flattened by a grand piano dropped on him by The Roadrunner, pops back into three dimensions. It was possible, I began to realize, that Tom was dead. The man I’d been married to for fourteen years, the father of my daughter and unborn child, the person I knew most intimately in the world… It could be possible that he might no longer exist.

I flashed on the problems that had been simmering between us over the past year. After Tom’s last film had gotten rave reviews and sold a happy number of tickets, he’d begun to get a little too attracted to the spoils of success. At his instigation, our once cozy Pacific Palisades house had acquired a large new addition. A room for the new baby and a home studio for me, both things I’d wanted – but also a screening room, a sauna, and a five-hundred-bottle humidity-controlled wine closet. The husband, whose idea of the perfect vacation had been a pup tent in the Grand Tetons, now began to read up on luxury cruises down the Amazon, and sojourns in eight-hundred-bucks-a-night rooms in Tuscan nunneries converted into spas.

But three months ago, when I became pregnant with our second child, there had been a change. Tom had seemed even more excited about the baby than I was. He called about twelve times a day to check up on my morning sickness (more like a random-pattern nausea that could strike twenty-four/seven). He reached for my hand when we were walking down the street. Cuddled me in bed. And instead of booking tables at the Hot Restaurant of the Second, we were spending evenings at home cooking up comfort foods and playing marathon Monopoly with Chloe. The old Tom—the sweet-natured, slightly nerdy, nutty-about-movies guy I’d fallen in love with—was the one who’d finally started to reemerge.

But could it really, truly be possible that he was now lying lifeless in the county morgue?

I was shivering. I wrapped my arms around myself and stared blankly out the window, as the homes and gates and flowering shrubs of our neighborhood gave way to shops and umbrella-dotted cafes and then to the anonymous metallic flow of the freeway. We veered off into industrial downtown canyons, and I fought down a rising slick of panic. I willed myself neither to throw up or to scream.

At last, Langocetti moored his car in the gloom of a subterranean parking structure. I clip-clopped numbly in my mules behind him as he led the way up a ramp into a grimly functional building. He signed us in at a counter, and we were buzzed through a heavy door.

A young Asian woman in shirtsleeves and diamond-patterned tie hurried up to meet us. Her slight build and delicate features made her look scarcely out of high school. I’m Lenore Yi, coroner’s investigator... She faltered, treating me to much the same startled squint as Langocetti had when I’d reappeared downstairs at home.

Could Mrs. Frampton see the body now? Langocetti said crisply.

Yi recovered her poise. Yes, of course. Please follow me.

She forged the way to an elevator, and we ascended to a second floor. We entered a carpeted room that might have been the reception room of any ordinary business, a maritime insurance firm, or a button wholesaler, if it hadn’t been for the smell. A faint but impossible-to-ignore stench, one that conjured up images of fast-food restaurant dumpsters on a sweltering day. I put my sleeve to my nose as we trudged through another door, into an antiseptically tiled room lined with large stainless-steel lockers: it seemed to cry out for large slabs of beef suspended from hooks, with perhaps the odd Mafia informant dangling upside down among them.

The stench was stronger here, asserting itself like a schoolyard bully. I drew a gagging breath.

Langocetti gripped my arm. Okay? she asked. Remember, you don’t have to go through with this.

I’m okay, I said. I’ll make it.

Then I caught a sudden glimpse of myself mirrored in the polished surface of one of the steel lockers. I gave a start. The jacket I had finally yanked from the closet had a pin fastened to the lapel—a red-and-orange Bakelite novelty pin from the forties in the shape of a guffawing horse’s head.

No wonder both Langocetti and Yi had looked at me as if I were not quite compos mentis...

It would make a great headline, I thought, with a lunatic silent giggle: Producer’s Wife Wears Wacky Pin to View Hubby’s Corpse.

I’ve got a lovely clown’s suit picked out for the funeral, Lucy Frampton told reporters. With baggy pants and a squirting boutonniere...

Are you ready, Mrs. Frampton?

My thoughts snapped back into focus. This was one confrontation I wouldn’t be able to joke my way out of.

Yes. I braced myself for the ordeal.

Langocetti’s hand clutched my arm again as Yi opened one of the meat lockers.

Remember, the wound to the face is going to be quite disturbing, she said. Are you certain you want to proceed with this?

What I was certain I wanted to proceed with was to swivel on the sturdy heels of my mules and make fast tracks out of Frankenstein’s pantry.

But I nodded and croaked out a Yes.

Yi rolled out a slab from one of several tiers in the locker. The body, in the best horror movie cliché, was covered with a white sheet. I began to shiver uncontrollably as Yi removed it and then began to unzip the plastic body bag.

Langocetti steered me forward. With my vision suddenly blurred, I looked down at the exposed head.

I let out a sharp gasp. A familiar head, with fine blond hair and small, neat ears... But where once there had been a face was now a ragged crater, and inside the crater was a ghastly muck of gristle, gray wormlike tubes, blackened shards of bone and congealed blood.

My chest contracted violently, my heart thudded like a pounding ball. My knees liquefied; I could hardly stand.

Is this your husband, Mrs. Frampton? said the coroner’s investigator.

I tried to speak, but my throat was too constricted. I closed my eyes, drew several breaths, then located what could pass for a voice.

No, I got out. It’s not.

Langocetti didn’t change expression. I had the feeling that even if the corpse should suddenly leap up and perform an energetic breakdance, it still wouldn't alter that stolid Deputy Dawg deadpan.

Yi had a somewhat different reaction. She opened and closed her mouth several times, as if in search of a suitable exclamation, something in the nature of Caramba! or Egad! Finally, she said, Do you know who it is?

I was having the same trouble finding words. My world, which had flip-flopped to adjust to Tom’s death, was now having to flip-flop again in an entirely different direction.

His name’s Brandon McKenna, I managed.

A friend? Langocetti inquired.

Yeah, a friend. And, um, he worked for us as well.

In what capacity? demanded Yi.

As a live-in. I mean, mostly to help out with our daughter. He took her to her activities and drove carpool, and when we went out, he stayed with her. That kind of thing.

You mean, he was your nanny? Yi said.

I guess you could say that. Brandon was our nanny.

I forced another look down at his destroyed face, and at the naked neck and shoulders below it, which were now the color of frosted pewter.

I saw no reason to add that he had also once been my lover.

Chapter Two

My very first lover, to be exact.

I was a freshman at Barnard, making an exceptionally slow adjustment from my semirural hometown in Minnesota, where the all-night Frostee Freeze was the wildest attraction, to the sensory overload of uptown Manhattan. Brandon was a senior at Columbia and the star of the art department -- a glamorous figure in a faded work shirt and paint-splotched jeans, with a Nikon draped perpetually around his neck. Everything about him seemed unutterably romantic: he was one-quarter Oglala Sioux; he could quote both William Blake and Eminem, as well as entire passages of the Bhagavad Gita. He had been orphaned as a baby and raised by a gangster uncle who was now also deceased, rubbed out by a rival criminal faction.

Second semester, we both took a class in Nouvelle Vague cinema. In the darkened screening room, while the rest of my classmates focused on Last Year at Marienbad, I concentrated on Brandon McKenna’s gorgeous shoulders.

When he asked me out, I was stunned. We ate Vietnamese, and talked of Truffaut and alt-rock and the future of art after Minimalism, and by the end of the evening, I was hopelessly in love. On our third date, in his cockroach-ruled Morningside Heights apartment, after consuming most of a bottle of a bargain Chilean Merlot and a few tokes of Rio Bravo gold, I had willingly relieved myself of my virginity.

As deflowerings go, mine was not exactly in the Earth Moves category. There was a lengthy prologue of fumbling with buttons, zippers, and hooks. Some hit-or-miss rubbing of erogenous zones. Followed by poking, a brief, sharp pain. And then that was that. And it had pretty much set the pattern over the course of our six-week affair: heavy on the boozy passion, a bit short in the physical fulfillment area.

It seemed natural when our relationship simmered down into a platonic friendship.

Brandon graduated, adding to his romantic aura by becoming a war photographer. For some years afterward, I’d get perfunctory messages from whatever part of the globe was currently in turmoil: "Just arrived in Afghanistan. On assignment for Time. Worse here than you can imagine."

Our communications tapered off, then stopped altogether. I heard he had segued into documentaries; I once caught the tail end of one on HBO.

I hadn’t thought of him for some time when, several years ago, he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary for an expose of ivory poaching in Zimbabwe. He didn’t win. The year before, I’d scored a nomination for one of my short animations and also lost, making us both Oscar also-rans.

I’d emailed him a breezy note of solidarity, received no reply, and Brandon McKenna vanished again from my thoughts.

Until two months ago.

I had made a morning run to an art supply store in Silver Lake to browse the vintage fountain pens sold there. As I slogged through traffic on my way home, I realized I was starving. One thing about pregnancy, it makes me perpetually ravenous. I craved all sorts of sometimes loony food combos—peanut butter and blueberry chutney; eggs scrambled with tuna, Tabasco and tiny cocktail onions. At the moment, it was the Cajun shrimp gumbo at the Farmers’ Market on West Third Street.

As I carried my heaped-up tray from the takeout counter to an outdoor table, a man polishing off a bowl of Spanish rice glanced up.

Lucy Kellenborg! he exclaimed. Is that really you?

Brandon? I said with equal astonishment.

He was, if possible, even more handsome than ever. Still rock-star lean. His copper hair, if a whit thinner, was now glamorously threaded with silver. We hugged vigorously, I settled myself into the chair at the table beside him, and we began talking as easily as if it had been only months and not going-on-two-decades since we’d last been together.

I gave him a recap of my life in the interval. It suddenly seemed dull and ordinary compared to Brandon’s war-covering adventures.

Yeah, well that’s a thing of the past, he said with a slow smile. I picked up some shrapnel in Iraq. There’s a few shards left in my ankle, and it flares up more and more these days. I think I’ll stay put for a while. Write a memoir of my year in Sub-Saharan Africa. I just need a gig to support me while I’m cranking it out.