1 Cupcakes, Lies, and Dead Guys Read online

  Why were all these civil servants at his estate? It wasn’t his annual Halloween party. Derrick knew he was a good citizen. He paid his taxes, contributed to the Fireman’s Fund, (Oh, how he contributed.)

  He winced as he watched Concha standing alone, biting her lip until it bled. What was wrong with her? A handsome late thirties Latino man with built shoulders, chest and arms that proved he spent time pumping more than beer bottles jogged past Tawny up to Concha. He flashed a badge, kneeled down and held Concha’s hands as she sobbed real tears. His voice, sounding sincere, floated toward Derrick and he heard, “I’m sorry Señora. Calm. Calm. Can I call someone for you? You can tell me anything. My name is Detective Raphael Campillio. What’s yours?” Concha babbled in Spanish to the super hot Detective Raphael.

  Something was definitely amiss in Derrick’s world.

  A bird screamed, “CAW!” He startled and saw a crow perched next to him on a tree branch. “Oh sod off you flying rat.” Wait—a tree branch? Derrick’s neck whiplashed side to side, back to front as he realized…

  He was forty feet up in the air sitting on a branch in one of his tall fir trees. Huh? He looked down and spotted his doppelganger body below him. That body was prone, laying on his chaise lounge, wearing his Pucci thong and very pink. That body was an imposter.

  Derrick observed as one paramedic took the imposter’s pulse. The guy shook his head. The paramedic put a stethoscope to his fake twin’s carotid—no heartbeat. This sent Derrick’s mind spinning. No. Couldn’t be. Unless that cupcake was laced with acid and he was hallucinating. He generally didn’t like acid. He preferred X. Maybe Tawny was up to some cruel demented trick. Ah-hah! She probably traded one of her newer girl-on-girl soft porn tapes to a couple of firemen in exchange for this mean practical joke. They had carried him, drugged and injured, up the tree with a tall ladder and put a CPR dummy in his place on the chaise. Very funny Tawny! You won this round. But this wasn’t some stupid talking heads’ war that we shouldn’t be in baby, because he had set a timetable to get out of this mess.

  Then the paramedic who examined the imposter’s body shook his head. He walked over to Tawny and said, “My condolences, Mrs. Fuller. Your husband has passed away.”

  Up in the tree Derrick practically passed out. Could not be!

  Tawny burst into crocodile tears. Concha sobbed more real ones. Madison Morgan, his new manager, a handsome Armani-dressed thirty-something guy, burst onto the scene from the house. He hustled over to Tawny, put his arm around her shoulders and whispered into her ear. She paused for a second, the top of her highlighted head tipped toward Madison’s thick black mane of hair. Then, her overly dramatic crying jag started again.

  Dr. Derrick Fuller couldn’t be dead. He was only fifty years old, enormously popular, in great shape and until now possessed perfect health. But beautiful, perfect-looking people still got killed every day. Accidents. Jealously. Road rage. But if he was dead, then why was he still here watching cops and paramedics mingle around his McMansion, his McWife and his grief-stricken maid? Shouldn’t he have already passed to the After-Life? Was there a hold up in heaven? And if he was for sure, completely, utterly, done deal, no going back, warranty expired dead, why was he still sitting in this damn tree?

  Okay. He was smarter than ninety-nine percent of the population. He could deal with this. Derrick watched as one cop cordoned his pool area with yellow police tape. Another cop examined the scene and gently placed evidence into official police plastic baggies and labeled them. Concha wrung her hands, wept and pointed to the Clarins sunscreen. That was quickly bagged, as well as all the food plates and glasses. Another cop wearing tight blue gloves dusted for prints. Concha pointed to Derrick’s ass, then to her right hand and sobbed some more. The print guy grimaced, then dusted Concha’s hand and Derrick’s behind, too.

  Derrick watched Madison hover next to Tawny while she held court at a lovely outdoor living set. A cop tried to question her. Tawny’s lower lip quivered and she wouldn’t articulate any coherent answers. Derrick smirked. Guess this wasn’t as fun as shopping at Snotsky’s. Tawny pulled herself together when a few more male firemen and paramedics walked over to her table. She sniffled and weakly signed a few more autographs. The cop frowned and asked if Tawny would describe her marriage to Derrick as happy, or not so happy.

  Madison answered for Tawny. “Talk to her attorney,” he said and led Tawny away from the veranda, back into the house, his arm around her impossibly tiny waist with two ribs surgically excised on each side.

  Derrick believed in past and future-lives and all that gobbleddy-gook, but this wasn’t either. This was… he had no idea. Where was he? Good God. Was this Hell?

  Annie glanced around her big room, saw floor to ceiling boxes and said to herself, “Breathe.” Moving mayhem. Some of the boxes were empty, others partially unpacked, but the majority were still closed. In their midst were her Italian grandmother’s desk, her dad’s hand carved wooden chest. Teddy hunkered down on her couch while he surveyed the room suspiciously. At the last minute Annie realized her large bed would take up practically the entire room and that she hated what it represented. She told the mover boys to drop it at Good Will. She would sleep on her couch.

  Gunshots rang outside. Teddy flinched. Annie didn’t. Could have been her brother Carson’s friends back in Wisconsin who liked to shoot their guns for fun. They’d go out back and fire at beer cans and watermelons and pictures of whatever Green Bay Packer player screwed up last week’s game. All good clean-hearted Midwestern fun. Carson and his buds fired so many guns during her life that now gunshots simply sounded like popping corn.

  However, when gunshots were followed by tire squeals and what sounded like two cars racing off, Annie was smart enough to duck. She watched enough episodes of Law & Order – Every Unit, to know that gunshots combined with tire squealing was not a good sign.

  Juan had hooked up her DVD player to her TV. She didn’t have cable yet but at least she could watch stuff while she unpacked. But out of the fifty plus boxes in the room, which one had the DVDs? She scoped and checked out twelve boxes ’till she found the one inscribed, “You are not allowed to watch romantic comedies. Love, Julia.”

  She ripped off the packing tape. Julia had place yellow stickies marked with hearts drawn around the word “Yes!” on her picks of safe things to watch. These included The Sound of Music—the Hallmark Channel remake, Bush/Cheney: The Last Days and TV Bloopers! 1960’s. Oh goodie. Maybe Annie’s torture would end tonight as she died from boredom.

  She tossed Julia’s selections and dug out some of her favorites. Sifted through them – forty percent thrillers, forty percent romances, ten percent balls-out comedies, five percent socially or politically relevant, and the rest whatever liberal, smart, cool people loved. She was beginning to think that she wasn’t a liberal, smart, cool person. She was probably a mixed, middling in the brains department, warm and occasionally prickly person.

  She grabbed the While You Were Sleeping disc and stuck it in the DVD player. Just a little mind candy while she got organized.

  Derrick took a chance and jumped off the branch. Forty feet down he landed in the pool. A small dent materialized in the water and gently rippled out toward the sides. He poked his still dry, albeit invisible, head up from the pool water and watched the techs as they squished his perfect dead body into a vinyl body bag. Vinyl. He hated vinyl. With all the taxes he paid couldn’t they have popped for leather?

  “Yikes,” Tech #1 said. A young, clean cut guy pointed to the ripples in the pool. “Look at that. Gives me the creeps. What do you think caused it?”

  Tech #2, an older, heavier guy shrugged. “Probably a pine cone dropped from that tree. Or could have been a mild quake.”

  “I’ve been on the job three months,” Tech #1 said. “This kind of stuff always gives me the jeevies. Makes me wonder about spirits and ghosts.”

  “I’ve been pushing stiffs around for twelve years and I’ve never seen one damn ghost. I’ll
guarantee it ain’t a damn ghost.” Tech #2 and zipped Derrick’s body into the bag. Unfortunately, the zipper snagged part of Derrick’s thong. Tech #2 tugged it. Which only embedded the thong’s fabric farther into the teeth. He pulled on the zipper. But it was indeed stuck. “Come on,” Tech #2 muttered as he yanked the zipper back and forth. Gently at first. Then rougher.

  Derrick watched in horror. “Careful. Easy,” he said in his soothing voice. Unfortunately no one heard him.

  The thong stretched but would not give. “Damn! I wanted to be home to catch the second half of the Lakers’ game.” Tech #2 heaved on the zipper.

  “That’s Pucci, you neanderthal!” Derrick screamed.

  Tech #1 said, “Hey, let me help.” He pulled on one end of the body bag while Tech #2 jammed on the opposite end. They heaved the zipper one-way, then yanked it back the other. They developed a strong rhythm. Enough so that if you ignored the two techs, Derrick’s corpse looked like he was having healthy vigorous sex, albeit for one, inside a partially open body bag.

  “That’s desecration of a corpse! That’s most likely felonious and punishable by…something terrible!” Derrick glared at the stupid techs from the side of the pool.

  Sweat poured off the two techs. “Zip fuck man. Jeez, this guy’s a pain in the balls,” Tech #2 said. They bust out laughing and the zipper finally gave. Tech #2 zipped the body bag all the way up. “Great. Now I’ll have to make a notation on the departmental form, “Thong threads stuck in zipper due to zipper/wardrobe malfunction.” He scribbled on a small piece of paper, initialed it and tucked it into the little plastic pocket on top of the body bag with the other identifying paperwork.

  An impeccable marble tiled driveway led from the curbside automated security gate and expanded to envelope the front of Derrick’s McMansion, front veranda and four-car garage. Black and whites, detective sedans, ambulances, a couple of Porsches, a 500 E class Benz, a shiny Jag and a morgue bus were parked on the marble perimeter. “Damn pseudo celeb,” Tech #1 said as they wheeled Derrick’s body on a gurney down the driveway to the morgue bus.

  Derrick trotted next to the techs. “Pseudo celeb?” He said. “I am the celeb. I am...”

  “I couldn’t even afford the insurance for one of those pups.” Tech #1 nodded at the pricey rides.

  “Downtown’s put a rush on Zip Fuck,” Tech #2 said as they hoisted and pushed the gurney into the back of the morgue bus.

  The bus driver, a very white guy with one lazy eye hovered next to the back doors.

  “I overheard they’re suspecting homicide. Vic got shot last night. Probably dress rehearsal for the real gig,” Tech #1 said and shut the bus’s back doors. Tech #2 emphatically pounded on the doors.

  “Somebody I know?” The morgue bus driver asked.

  “Nah, Morgo. Just some pussy best-selling self-help author, Dr. Derrick Fuller.”

  Morgo turned white. “Not Dr. Derrick!” He bit his lip. “He promised me…”

  “Wait, I remember you,” Derrick said. “You were the guy who wanted to open a mortuary, some day. You loved dead people—just like other people love dogs, or kids, or scrap booking. I thought you had passion and talent, and helped you set goals.”

  Tech #2 glared at Morgo. “What did he promise you, Morgo? A blow job? You should have started getting those in high school,” he said. “Escort Zip Fuck to the morgue. He’s a pseudo celeb, so don’t attract attention. Pretend he’s an old guy who choked on cantaloupe in his dining room and died with his head in a bowl of fruit salad. Drive slow and safe. Don’t use the dome. If we’re lucky they’ll be cutting Derrick Fuller open, weighing his liver and taking tissue samples tonight before I even get to sit on my twenty-year-old couch, let alone crack open a cold one. Shit, I hope I get to see the last quarter.”

  Derrick felt like all the blood rushed out of his body. Uh-oh. In reality that was literally going to happen. Maybe it was time to call it a day. This day was so sucky rotten that it couldn’t get any worse.

  Annie sat on the floor surrounded by junk food wrappers, a half-emptied bottle of wine and snot-filled balled-up tissues. She had given up unpacking and was engrossed in her favorite Sandy Bullock romantic comedy, While You Were Sleeping. She blew her nose into another tissue and tossed it. She not only loved Sandy, but also imagined that she and Sandy’s character were the same person right now. Alone except for a cat and desperately wanting love. More tears leaked out of Annie’s eyes.

  She walked to the bathroom, grabbed some toilet paper, blew her nose and looked in the mirror. Her eyes were puff, and rivulets of mascara bled down her face. She resembled the bastard love child of Marilyn Manson and Bozo the Clown. She shuffled back to the living room and plunked back on the floor. Teddy ran up to her with a fuzzy sparkly cat toy in his mouth and dropped it into her lap. She threw it across the room and he ran after it. At least his excellent adventure continued.

  Her cell rang and she checked caller ID. It was Nancy/Mom. Julia said she shouldn’t talk to her Mom tonight. So she didn’t pick up.

  Her cell rang again—this time Julia. If Nancy knew that Julia told her not to pick up for Nancy, Nancy would have told her that she couldn't talk to Julia. So she didn’t pick up that phone call, either.

  A couple minutes later, a third ring. Nancy. Again. Annie hesitated. It was that part in the movie where Sandy was going to marry the wrong brother. (Very emotional. No Sandy— Don’t!) So she let Nancy’s message go to voice mail. Voice mail was way more psychologically equipped than she was right now to handle Nancy.

  Just as Sandy was walking down the aisle in the hospital’s tiny chapel, Annie’s phone rang again. She couldn’t take it any longer and just answered the damn thing. “This better be good,” she said.

  Heavy breathing emanated over the phone, “Heeeeee. Heeeeee. Oooooh.”

  Yuk. Ick. Phooey. She recoiled and pulled the phone away from her ear. It felt like the heavy breather’s words practically oozed down her cheek. No, that would be the snotball tissue that Teddy retrieved and tossed at her face. She wiped the goo off her cheek and threw the snotball-now-cat toy back into the furthest reaches of her new apartment, eighteen whole big feet away. He bounded after it.

  The phone breather continued, “Nooh. Aaaaaah. Help. Eeeeeeh.”

  Annie gathered her fury and hissed into the phone, “You’d like that wouldn’t you, pervert! I’ll help you pervert. I’ll help you to hell and back.”

  “Oooooh.”

  Annie hung up. Click. She returned to watching Bill Pullman and his enormously cute family give Sandy Bullock an engagement ring at her turn-style at the Chicago el station. Now that was love and that was worthy of heavy breathing.

  The Observer crouched in the bushes across the street from Annie’s apartment, held a pair of binocs and watched Annie through the opening in her curtains. The Observer dropped a Piccolino’s Pastries wrapper to the ground, lifted a devil’s food cupcake and took a big juicy bite.

  The morgue bus exited the estate. Drove down Sunset Boulevard past the gated, ritzy, residential section of the Palisades. Cruised down the Strip—not too busy at this time of night.

  Morgo kept the domed spiraling lights off and dark. He played with the radio. All he could get was the golden oldies station that played The Rolling Stones, Sympathy for the Devil.

  Derrick watched from the back of the morgue bus and placed his spirit hand on his dead body. “I’m sorry. I’ve been a jerk. Self-absorbed. I don’t know how but I’ll figure out who did this to us. I’ll bring our killer to justice,” he said and put his head in hands. He realized the morgue bus had stopped, the engine silent. That seemed like a quick trip from the Palisades to downtown. But what did he know about time in the After-Life? Some said it was quick. Other sages insisted that it was slow, endless…

  The back doors of the bus squeaked open. Derrick jumped out first. “Thank God you stopped. I was getting claustrophobic back there. It’s like a tomb. How did King Tut do it all those years?” He looked up. They wer
e directly under the Hollywood Sign. “If I go to the After-Life, I think I’ll ask him.” He watched Morgo climb into the back of the van and unzip Derrick’s body bag. “I must say that I am honored, that you, Morgo—a man I can trust—are escorting me, well, what used to be me, to our next big appointment. Thank you. Thank you,” spirit Derrick said and wiped a few tears from his eyes.

  Morgo pulled the gurney with Derrick’s body in the unzipped bag out of the bus. He heaved it to the side of the road, whipped out a digital camera, leaned in and took multiple compromising photos of dead Derrick in his body bag. “You promised me, Dr. Fuller. I want my mortuary. I need my dead people.”

  Appalled, Derrick watched. And then he laughed. “Good student, Morgo. Those shots with the Hollywood Sign in the backdrop will be more lucrative. Now, snaps. Get those over to Star or The Enquirer, ASAP. I’m not just a nobody pseudo-celebrity.”

  The morgue bus took off again. Derrick touched his lips to his hand and placed that kiss gently on top of his body bag. “One more thing, my friend. I’m jazzed about seeing our photos in the tabloids this week. But I can’t watch our autopsy. You know medical procedures generally make me queasy. The Botox injections, Restylane, Fraxel, Thermage, the mini-lifts, lipo and all the stuff with the cancer—I had to take Valium before each procedure. I’m sorry. You’re going to have to go this one alone.”

  The morgue bus pulled into the receiving area of the downtown L.A. County Forensics Facility. Otherwise known as the Los Angeles County Morgue.

  Derrick exited through the open doors as his body was wheeled out. What now?

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