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lunch or a drink
after work, then bombard us with whatever murderous thoughts she had in her
head.
    If
we figured out who the killer was, she'd go back and rethink the plot. Her
biggest joy was getting one past us.
    'I've
stumped the experts,' she would say. 'This book is going to be a bestseller.'
    And,
of course, it always was. Nora was short, smart, tough, funny, and immensely
popular in fifty countries. She was also a bit of a loon. A lot of people check
their horoscopes, but Nora based every one of her life decisions on how the
planets aligned with the stars. She refused to let her publisher launch a book
if Mercury was in retrograde. As for her partners in the house-flipping
business, any one of the wives at our station would have been thrilled to get
in on the action, but Nora only invited the astrologically blessed. The sad
exception was her daughter Julia, the biggest disappointment of Nora's life.
Who knows if Julia would ever have been anything besides a failed poet living
in her mother's shadow, but when Mom keeps telling you that you were three
weeks premature, so, despite all her calculations, it's your fault that you
popped out under a bad sign, your whole life is basically fucked. It doesn't
matter if it was mystical or self-fulfilling, either way it was a prophecy
Nostradamus would be proud to call his own.
    I'd
never been to her home till now. It was three stories high, pure white, and
screamed art deco.
    'It's
like somebody broke off a piece of the Chrysler Building and dipped it in
powdered sugar,' Terry said.
    'Does
that mean you hate it?' I said.
    'Are
you kidding? I'd kill to own that house. Oh, wait, that's what she does.'
    Nora's
assistant, Martin Sorensen, greeted us at the front door. We'd met him several
times before at her book signings. Five years ago he had been a low-paid
assistant editor at Nora's publisher. She was so impressed, she hired him to
become her high-paid flunky.
    Clean-cut,
good-looking, well organised, and totally buttoned up, Martin is the perfect
assistant. Even more perfect than one might imagine. At last year's book
launch, after several trips to the punch bowl, Charlie let us know he was
pretty sure that old Martin was banging his mother-in-law.
    Of
course, old Martin wasn't exactly old. He was thirty-seven. And while Nora's
website doesn't give her age, the consensus from the media sites put her at
sixty- four.
    'Julia
thinks it's adorable that her mother is screwing a guy young enough to be her
son,' Charlie had said. 'I think it's creepy. I asked around. He's got a
reputation for chasing cougars, and Nora is one hell of a rich cougar.'
    'Terrible
tragedy about Jo,' Martin said as he walked us through the house to the pool.
Nothing more. Just the basic pap you mumble as you shake hands with the
bereaved at a funeral service and move on.
    Nora
and her daughter, Julia, were having coffee on the patio. Nora sprang up when
we she saw us. 'I'm so glad you're working this case,' she said, giving each of
us quick double-cheek Hollywood air kisses. 'You got anything yet?'
    'We're
still putting it together,' I said. 'Good morning, Julia.'
    Unlike
her mother, who was small and blonde, Julia was big and bland. 'Hi,' she said.
    'This
is sur-freaking-real,' Nora said. 'Do you have any idea who might have killed
her?'
    'That's
what we came to ask you,' I said.
    'The
three of us have been racking our brains about it all morning,' Nora said.
'Nobody we know could possibly have done this. Maybe it has something to do
with her past. Something none of us know about.'
    'Everybody
loved her,' Martin added helpfully.
    'You
all got along? No infighting? No problems?'
    A
chorus of three yeses.
    'Would
Marisol Dominguez agree with that?' I asked.
    Nora
laughed. She sat back in her chair and downed what was left in her coffee cup.
Without a word, Martin picked up the empty cup and refilled it from a large
chrome carafe. 'Well, there was no love lost between Marisol and Jo,' Nora
said. 'They were