Fabulously Dead

Chapter One

Needless to say when Julia Prentice began to cast her huge, hazy eyes in the direction of my husband, I should have snapped to immediate attention. But at the moment I was too busy thinking about her breasts.

The reason I was so fixated on her anatomy was because of something I’d recently heard—that Julia had had two sets of breast implants, the first having developed some sort of peculiar bubbles in the silicone, making it appear she’d sprouted a second pair of nipples (a condition that I happen to know actually exists. It’s called polythelia and isn’t even that uncommon). So, back to her surgeon Julia sashayed, and had herself repadded, in the process bumping herself up from a 36B to a C; and I found myself staring at the front of her flowy chiffon shirt, wondering what this fabulous bosom could possibly look like after all that tinkering.

I can’t tell you how much I admire the two of you, Julia was saying.

What? I forced my attention back to her cinnamon-painted mouth.

You and Tom. You’ve been married practically forever, haven’t you?

I wouldn’t call it forever. Going on twelve years.

Twelve years. Julia repeated this as if it were some vast, possibly geologic, time span. Of course, you’ve always been perfectly happy, haven’t you?

Oh, we’ve had our ups and downs. Every marriage has its thin patches. There’ve been lots of times we’ve really had to work at it. I heard myself starting to sound like Dear Abby and quickly stoppered my lips with my glass of Chardonnay to keep further platitudes from springing from them.

Julia’s eyes scanned the mob of people congregated on her terrace and zoomed in on Tom, cornered against a huge stone urn by what looked like a preteen in a Raiders cap, but was probably either an agent or a gaming exec. I can see why you’d work hard to keep him, she murmured. He’s very attractive. Terrific ass. He must be great in bed.

I gave a startled laugh. The earth moves, the angels sing. Every time is as magical as the first.

Julia didn’t laugh. Rather, she regarded me as solemnly as if I’d quoted some rare and insightful passage of the Kama Sutra.

You don’t know how lucky you are, Lucy, she said. Most men in Hollywood are lousy at sex. It’s like, while they’re doing it, they’re checking their phones.

I searched for another jokey comeback, as I usually did when I felt unsure of myself, but I was beginning to realize that Julia was one of those beautiful women who’d never felt an urgent need to cultivate a sense of humor. So I opted for saying nothing, staring instead beyond the Prentices’ gardens to the broad band of the Pacific Ocean sparkling in the sun.

The occasion for our little tête-à-tête was a party Julia was throwing, a Sunday afternoon bash to mark the first anniversary of her return from some mysterious part of China with an infant girl—a round-faced, button-nosed little thing named Quanxi. She’d been abandoned, and I knew I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t try to rescue her! she had breathlessly confided to a reporter from Vulture. "Her name means snow before the dawn, and no, we wouldn’t dream of changing it. We’re going to do everything in our power to preserve her magnificent Chinese heritage."

I was surprised we’d been invited. The Prentices had been our across-the-street neighbors in the Palisades for almost four years, but each of our houses was huddled behind an electronically operated gate, and our social contact was generally limited to cheery finger waggles when we passed each other in our cars. And Tom and I were no longer what you’d call an A-list couple: Tom, a producer whose last two movies had been resounding box-office flops; me, an animation filmmaker, which set me pretty much out of ranking in the standard Hollywood hierarchy.

But invited we were, a card arriving in the mail sprinkled with violet and silver stars, addressed to The Frampton Family, summoning us to an afternoon of Festive Family Fun.

Family being a current celebrity infatuation. There were kids everywhere—on sets, crawling through the corridors of production offices, scrambling among the thickets of adult legs at every party and gathering. Pregnant movie stars waddled onto the sets of talk shows. High-powered female agents breastfed infants at lunch meetings.

All the Hollywood Wives were scrambling to become Hollywood Moms...

And Julia, ever able to sniff the prevailing winds, was doing Family with a vengeance. For our Partying Pleasure, we had two Coast Guard certified scuba instructors dipping teenagers in the pool, while actors costumed as various animation characters—Shrek, Kung Fu Panda—mugged for the toddlers. And on the side lawn, an entire petting zoo, complete with a baby llama and boa constrictor, to which my animal-crazy nine-year-old daughter, Chloe, made an immediate beeline .

Leaving me free to be waylaid on the terrace by our humorless hostess.

Julia, like so many stunning women in town, had started out as an actress. In fact, just two nights before I’d caught her in an old Law & Order SUV rerun, playing a business executive snapping orders at some hunky young guy who proceeded to strangle her with a computer cord. (Dead before the first commercial break—not exactly her big break.) So now, when she suddenly emitted a sort of gargled cry, it was so exactly like the sound she’d made when the IBM cord tightened around her neck, I gave a start.

That idiot! she hissed.

The birthday—or rather, anniversary—girl, Quanxi, was being wheeled through the crowd by her English nanny. She was dressed in a tam-o’-shanter, wee plaid kilt, and emerald leggings (so much for the magnificent Chinese heritage), a vision that sent ricochets of oohing and aahing among the guests.

She wasn’t supposed to bring the kid out until the cake! Turning abruptly, Julia charged a swath through the crowd from terrace to stroller, shot a murderous glare at the Englishwoman, and proprietarily snatched up the little girl.

Julia’s TV superstar husband, Woody Prentice, materialized at her side. And together they began to hold court.

Don’t they look divine? sighed a bony blonde on my right.

I returned a vague smile. Divine was exactly right. People magazine had recently featured the Prentices on the cover: Julia, wearing something that looked suspiciously like a housedress, gazing with Madonna-like rapture at the black-eyed baby on her lap; Woody, with his saintly shock of white hair, a proud protector behind her. All three were bathed in a kind of radiant, heaven-suggestive glow...looking, for all the world, like the Holy Family of Hollywood.

Waaaa!

The Holy Family was suddenly having a bit of trouble. Little Quanxi had begun to squirm and fret in her mother’s arms. Julia, with a grim smile, tightened her grip. The baby countered by kicking a smart heel into Julia’s taut stomach and started to howl, which caused papa Woody to hop backward in panic. At which point, Julia thrust Quanxi back into her nanny’s care, and the two of them, Julia and Woody, began to lurch rapidly toward a long bar set up against the jacarandas.

I laughed out loud. Now, that was a shot for People magazine.

What’s so funny? Tom suddenly appeared behind me.

Julia and Woody are experiencing the joys of parenthood. Three minutes of it, and they seem to feel the need for a stiff drink.

He gave a grunt. I could use a drink myself. I’ve just spent the last forty minutes being hustled by a twenty-six-year-old agent named Dickie. I feel like I barely escaped alive.

Poor baby. Why did he zero in on you?

"I think the word’s got out that Sugerman’s interested in doing Willigher. And just in case it’s true, Dickie wants to be my best friend."

In spite of myself, I experienced a quick thrill of excitement. Willigher was a script Tom had had in development for several years. It was a ghost story chock-full of special effects, making it expensive enough that no studio would commit without a major element attached, star or director. Recently, miraculously, it had attracted the interest of Jon Sugerman. The Jon Sugerman, the director whose last three movies had each grossed over a billion bucks. But as I intimately knew, in Hollywood, even the surest thing can vanish in a twinkle: one minute you’re whizzing along in a golden coach, then abrakazam! suddenly you’re just squatting on a pumpkin.

If the agents think it’s worth talking about it, maybe it could actually happen, I said tentatively.

That kid doesn’t know a thing! Tom snapped. Except contact information. The guy’s a walking contacts list.

Oh, I said.

We lapsed into one of the strained silences we’d become so adept at lately. Ironically, amid all the Hollywood family hoopla, our own marriage was not exactly peaches and cream—in fact, we were going through one of those thin patches I’d just been breezily spouting about to Julia. And our sex life was hardly the stuff to make angelic beings reach for their hankies—unless, of course, it was to stifle a yawn. Listen, I said abruptly, do you really want another drink? Why don’t we grab Chloe and go home and watch a movie?

Now? I think it would be a little rude to the Prentices. And to tell you the truth, I wouldn’t mind circulating some more. He added, It might not hurt you either to make a few new connections.

Right. I should go mingle with that pack of young actresses over there. I’ll bet they could connect me with the best bikini wax in town.

Tom glared at me. He had a broad blond face, like Mr. Sun in the old Raisin Bran ads—at the moment, Mr. Sun under heavy cloud cover. You know, sometimes I think you actually avoid anything that might help your career. That maybe you’ve got some screwed-up fear of success.

That’s bullshit! I flashed back. I’m the one who got the Oscar nomination, remember.

Four years ago. And just because you lost is no reason to keep your head stuck in the sand.

I was about to shoot back something zinging in my defense, but people were staring.

I think I’ll go find Chloe, I said frostily. Make sure she’s cultivating the right connections. I hear the baby llama’s a real power player at Disney.

I swallowed the dregs of my Chardonnay and set the glass down on the balustrade. Some instinct made me glance back down at Julia. She had recovered her aplomb, and was standing in easy contrapposto, raking her fingers through her rich coffee-colored hair...And gazing hungrily up at my husband.

Chapter Two

The first thing you learn when you shop for a home in any halfway desirable neighborhood in L.A. is that every property comes with a pedigree. Who Used To Live Here is as big a selling point as whether the master bath has a Jacuzzi tub, or whether, if you rip up the grungy pumpkin carpet, you’ll find peg-and-groove flooring underneath.

Our first house, a tiny Craftsman bungalow in Sherman Oaks, had once been occupied (or so we were breathlessly informed by the listing agent) by the sportscaster on Channel 4, the one with the obvious toupee. After Chloe was born, we moved to a charming, if drafty, miniature castle nestled in the Hollywood Hills, boasting the distinction of having belonged to a British director. But with our present home, we really struck the celebrity-occupied jackpot. Built in the thirties by a producer with the old MGM studios, who’d reputedly dropped dead while shaking up vermouth-free martinis in the breakfast nook. Sold in 1944 to the one and only Barbara Stanwyck. And, at some point back in the 2010s, leased to Beyoncé.

I admit I relished the idea of Stanwyck pacing our bedroom, furiously chain-smoking, while some man, possibly Fred MacMurray, sprawled naked and fretting on the bed. But mostly I loved the house for itself—a rambling mock farmhouse on a winding, wooded lane. It had a brick hearth in the kitchen, suitable for roasting a pig on a spit; carved mahogany beams that flung mysterious shadows on the whitewashed walls; and a huge ancient spruce that, since the last earthquake, leaned at a Tower of Pisa-like tilt.

When we bought the house six years ago, we were sort of rich. Tom had just produced the hit movie Little Crimes. Money began to shower down on us, a monsoon of fortune. Tom moved into a bigger office with an assistant named Giles and settled back to sort through the dozens of projects now tumbling his way.

But his next two movies were flops. Megaflops. The kind where friends slink out fire exits after screenings rather than risk having to face you. The money monsoon dried to a sprinkle and had lately become a drought.

As for me, my succès was mostly d’estime. My animated shorts scooped up awards and accolades by the dozen. I’d been flown to Budapest to accept first prize in a Hungarian short-film festival and been honored with a retrospective by the NYU film school. And, yeah, an Oscar nomination—for Best Short Film, Animation Category.

But none of this paid the mortgage.

I was the one who insisted on putting the house on the market. We’re not broke yet, Tom objected. I’ve got a lot of stuff in the fire. If any of them go...

If, I cut in. "Hollywood runs on if."

We were both familiar with the scenario: get a hit, make a small fortune, then spend it as fast as it comes in, because you can’t believe it will ever stop. And when it does stop, you go right on spending because there’s always an if—right up to the point where the bank repossesses your house and the leasing company demands the keys to your cars. We’d seen it happen to a dozen people we knew.

So up went the CHAS WHITE REALTY sign, with its tasteful, if geographically baffling, logo of a crescent of Georgian townhouses.

And at eight a.m. sharp, the Tuesday after Julia’s party, our real estate agent Marsha Moss-Golson’s nails-scraping-a-blackboard voice assaulted my ear over the kitchen phone. Honeycakes, listen, I gotta couple of sterling buyers on the line. He’s a big wheel in marketing over at Sony, she’s an attorney, just had a first baby. They’ve already unloaded a place in Hancock Park, they’ve got C-A-S-H, I absolutely know they’re gonna flip over your place.

My heart sank. It was one thing to stick a FOR SALE sign on the gate, another to imagine the house actually being sold.

They wanna see it at lunch, say, around one-thirty, Marsha plowed on. I hate this kind of short notice, but I really don’t think we oughta let these people get away. I could hear her, as she spoke, patting on her third layer of foundation and spritzing a membrane of hair spray over her frantic gold-do. Marsha had hit upon her look—stilettos, big hair, important nails—twenty-four years ago, the year she unloaded a twelve-acre estate in Bel-Air on a Saudi prince and raked in her fabled million-buck commission. She’d apparently seen no good reason to change it.

Okay, I agreed reluctantly. Bring them by. I’ll try to be out of your way.

I hung up and quickly dressed. My wardrobe was made up almost entirely of vintage items, everything from Edwardian midi-blouses to fifties angora twin sets, mostly culled from the flea markets and thrift shops I was forever haunting. I also collected Fiesta and old Pacific ware, Depression glass, rhinestone costume jewelry—in fact, just about anything made before I was born.

Now I shrugged on a calf-length forties dress, fastened a Bakelite clip in my hair and went downstairs. I popped my head into the den, where Tom was engaged in his usual morning routine—gulping a can of Diet Coke while fielding the messages that began around seven. Producers come in two varieties, those that want to be loved and those that want to be feared. Tom was firmly of the former; caressing, cajoling, always playing the cheerleader. He often worked at home for several hours, sometimes straight till lunch.

Some people are coming to look at the house at one, I said. Will you still be here?

He shook his head vigorously and covered the mouthpiece. Another hour and I’m gone.

There was a time he’d have pantomimed a kiss and I’d have blown one back, but now he was already back texting furiously. Every year a new platoon of killer-eyed young hotshots swarmed into town, ready to make human sacrifice if necessary to oust Tom from his cozy offices and install themselves in his place. Tom was running so fast to stay ahead of them, no wonder he had little time left for incidentals like our marriage.

I headed to the stairs and yelled to Chloe. After a dramatic moment, she came sloping down, all slouchy layers of denim.

I’m the only girl in my entire class who doesn’t have pierced ears, she announced.

We’ve been through this a thousand times. Not till your twelfth birthday. I brushed a stray curl from her forehead. Her hair was the same Little Orphan Annie red as my own had been before it mellowed into its present dark maple.

"Alwyn Rossner’s got two in both her ears, and she’s got diamond studs, and she’s allowed to wear nail polish, even black if she wants."

Alwyn Rossner can smoke cigars for all I care. I happen to think kids should act like kids.

You think nobody should ever grow up so they’ll still watch your lame cartoons.

You got that right, I said briskly. Go give Dad a kiss and let’s move.

Chloe threw me a sidewise glance before shuffling into the den. I’d long suspected that my daughter felt she was issued the wrong type of mother. What she thought she deserved was one of those Louis Vuitton blonde ladies in jumpsuits who ran companies. What she got was a reasonably pretty redhead in chrysanthemum-sprigged rayon who looked young for her thirty-seven years—and who currently sported a storyboard under her arm illustrating the adventures of Amerinda, a turquoise flying hedgehog.

Chloe emerged from the den and trailed me into the garage, still cataloging the many hardships of her life. As I backed out my four-year-old Grand Cherokee, the electric gates across the road creaked open; the Prentices’ English nanny sailed out behind the wheel of the biggest of their three Teslas, little Quanxi strapped into a baby seat in back. I wondered where Julia was. Probably still getting her beauty sleep. Or doing her famous hundred-a-day laps in her enormous pool.

Twelve minutes later, I pulled into the line of cars snaking up to the fieldstone gates of The School.

The School was another remainder of our being temporarily rich. It was technically named the Windermere Academy for Progressive Education; it resembled the country seat of a dissolute Regency earl, the tuition was obscenely high, and it was the learning institution of choice for the worshiped kids of the Hollywood elites. The story had long been told that for show-and-tell one year, a fourth grader had brought in Johnny Depp. True or not, I do know the Motion Picture Academy could save a bundle by holding the Oscars at The School’s parents’ night—the crowd is pretty much the same.

For instance, in the silver Range Rover behind me was Mattie Ballard, second-highest-paid actress in the world. Pale hair scraped back from a makeup-free face, she looked almost nondescript, like any other everyday mom dropping off her seven-year-old.

On the other hand, Francine Palumbo, in the mulberry Audi ahead of me, who was a full-time mom, was as glossily done up as any movie queen.

Oliver, her son from her first marriage, hopped out of the front seat. He had the flaxen hair, cerulean eyes and peach-down skin of an angel. Chloe waved to him, and he bounced up to her window—and spat, a fat, foamy white glob that slid lazily down the glass.

Gross! yelled Chloe, recoiling. That Ollie Latch is such a creep!

That’s a fact, I silently agreed. Even in a crowded field, Ollie Latch-Palumbo finished a strong first for the title of Local Demon Seed.

Am I picking you up today? I asked Chloe.

Nuh-uh. I’ve got soccer and then story workshop, and then I’m getting a ride home with Alwyn. Sometimes they send the limo, she added with a disturbing note of excitement. Allowing me a quick peck on my cheek, she plunged into the throng of kids.

Grade-schoolers with Prada backpacks and MacBooks and diamonds in their ears: I suddenly wasn’t weeping over the fact that we probably couldn’t afford to send Chloe back there in the fall.

It took twenty minutes to maneuver my way out of the clot of cars, most, like my own, four-wheel drives that would never navigate any terrain more rugged than Benedict Canyon. Then I headed to the tiny studio space I rented in Culver City. I’d landed one of my rare paying jobs, for an Apple TV kids’ show called Excellent Science—a continuing animated segment that each week illustrated another scientific principle. This week was gravity, which was where my flying hedgehog came in. Amerinda goes whizzing around the sky, until a passing Canadian goose clues her into the laws of gravity, at which point plop! down she goes—landing with uncanny luck in a friendly farm.

Once absorbed in my computer, I lost all track of time; only the thrashing of rain against the windows made me look up. One of those sudden, drenching downpours that seem to come from nowhere and end as abruptly as they begin—unusual for this late in May.

I was starving, it was past lunchtime; I decided to head back home.

The rain had stopped by the time I reached the house; the thick, cotton-waddy clouds were scurrying off to Pasadena, and the glamorous L.A. sun was already sopping up the puddles. Our electric gates were open. Tom was getting very absent-minded these days, I thought briefly.

I parked the Cherokee in the driveway and went straight into the kitchen. Tom’s number lit up on my phone. I grabbed a fistful of water crackers and, munching, answered.

The deal’s closed! Tom’s delirious voice shouted. Jon Sugerman is committed. And Netflix says preproduction will start immediately. So I’m off to Seattle on Friday to start location scouting. Dinner tonight at Nobu or wherever you want. And tear down that goddamned real estate sign! Gotta go, bye!

I let out a yell. Our house was saved! My beloved house with its moody beams and tangerine trees and crazy old tilted spruce! Plus now Tom could stop running frantically in place; we’d be a real family again. Maybe even start that second child we used to talk about once upon a time.

I started whooping and shimmying around the kitchen and then I burst outside.

And suddenly I was having difficulty getting my feet to move. It was like stomping through mashed potatoes, something thick and oozy sucking at each step.

Oh, shit, I exclaimed. It was mud, a good foot and a half of it spread over the ground.

The rain had caused a slide.

Most of our backyard was formerly a hill that had been terraced into four levels, with steps made of broken brick leading the way up. The pool, a long aquamarine rectangle, was carved into the top level, which—property-value speaking—was considered a flaw: not only couldn’t you see it from the house, but before taking a dip you had to huff and puff up four steepish rows. A little stucco casita, which we grandly called the pool house, was built against what was left of the hill. It was from behind here that the mud had cascaded, flowing into one end of the pool, then down in a relentless, winding stream toward the house.

I started up the steps to survey the damage. The outdoor furniture had been blown about; one umbrella table knocked completely into the pool. And by the time I reached the second level, I could make out something that looked like seaweed floating in the water.

A lotta celebrities live in this neighborhood, a voice suddenly intoned.

I glanced down to see Marsha Moss-Golson shepherding a couple out the kitchen door. The Sterling Buyers—I had totally forgotten about them!

Did I mention to you that Beyoncé once rented this home?the Moss-Golson voice rasped on. And right across the street lives Woody Prentice.

The Sterling Buyers were both whippet thin and wore I smell cheese expressions, which puckered even tighter as they surveyed the rivulet of mud. Looks like a problem here, sniffed the man.

And that lopsided spruce tree will have to come down, pronounced the woman.

I was going to love telling these folks the property was no longer for sale. Rather gleefully, I skipped up the final flight to pool level...

Where I could now see that what I had thought was seaweed were actually long, undulating strands of hair. And that the hair belonged to Julia Prentice, half-submerged in the muddy water, facedown, bottom up.

She was stark naked.

And starker dead.

You’re gonna love living in the Palisades, Marsha was going on. It’s a real family neighborhood. Perfect for kids...

It was all I heard before I started to scream.

Chapter Three

Detective Teresa Shoe of the Los Angeles Police Department was of medium height, medium build, and walked, toes splayed out, like a duck. Age, fortyish. Hair, mouse brown with silver threads, lopped in a bowl style that emphasized her round face. Poly-blend white shirt, poly-blend taupe slacks, tailored blazer of a browny-gray that made an uneasy marriage with the taupe. Footwear, sensible.

In short, she looked like any other overworked, middle-aged American woman, one of hundreds you might see picking through markdowns at Walmart—which was probably why she looked so unordinary tramping through the rooms of our house. In this part of town, even the repair and maintenance people tended to be on the dazzling side. Our pool man, for instance,