Death of a Neighborhood Scrooge by Laura Levine

Author:Laura Levine
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2018-07-08T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

So Elise had hit the jackpot. She’d inherited everything. You should have seen the look on Missy’s face when Mr. Sharkskin told her how much it was all worth: More than five mil in Scotty’s brokerage account, plus the house in Bel Air.

For the first time since Scotty’s death, Missy genuinely looked the part of the grieving widow.

I bid her and Dave and Mr. Sharkskin good-bye and beat a hasty retreat back to Casa Van Hooten, armed with a hot new murder suspect.

Namely, Elise Parker.

With more than five mil at stake, Elise made a very viable suspect indeed.

Had she known all along about the will and, at the end of her rope, decided to cash in with a frozen Yule log?

Possible, but not likely. If Elise knew she was going to inherit everything, why risk losing it all engaging in ongoing battles with Scotty? Why not keep the good will flowing until he popped off?

Then I remembered her visit on Christmas Eve when she’d ransacked Scotty’s office looking for his checkbook. It had taken her quite a while before she’d returned to the living room, check in hand. What if, while poking through Scotty’s desk, she’d found a copy of the will? And what if, discovering how much she had to gain by Scotty’s death, she returned the next day to collect on her inheritance?

Back in Mrs. Van Hooten’s kitchen, I logged on to my computer and found Elise’s address on whitepages.com.

Time to pay the newly minted heiress a little visit.

* * *

Hopping into my Corolla, I made my way to Elise’s apartment in Hollywood—a shabby, water-stained affair perched atop a kabob restaurant.

I checked the directory in a grimy doorway next to the kabob joint and buzzed Elise’s apartment, hoping she’d be home. I’d decided to drop in on her unannounced, hoping to catch her off guard.

Luckily, she answered my buzz.

“Who is it?” she asked, her voice scratchy over the intercom.

“Jaine Austen.”

“Do I know you?”

“Not really, but—”

“Then forget it. Now’s not a good time.”

That’s what she thought. I wasn’t about to get turned away so easily. Time for a weensy fib.

“I’m Mr. Carmichael’s assistant,” I blurted out. “He asked me to stop by with some legal papers for you to sign.”

“Why didn’t you say so? I’m in 202.”

And just like that, she was buzzing me in.

What can I say? Sometimes it pays to be devious.

A creaky elevator etched with an imaginative display of male genitalia delivered me to the second floor, where Elise was waiting for me outside her apartment in a faded silk bathrobe, her hair uncombed, in bedhead mode.

“Come in,” she said, waving me inside.

The first thing that hit me when I walked in the room was the overwhelming aroma of onion and garlic.

“Excuse the smell,” Elise said. “It’s from the kabob joint downstairs. I’m right above the kitchen. And it never goes away. I can douse myself in perfume, and I still smell like baba ganoush.”

I followed her past a small dining area into her living room, furnished very Early Motel 6, with a drab oatmeal sofa and particle board furniture.

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